My restaurant recommendations: West London

West London is not my area of expertise, I admit it. I am not going to try and pretend.

There are two quite simple reasons for this. The first is laziness – the West is not my part of London and I have not devoted enough time to exploring it. Secondly, it tends to be expensive; well the places I want to go to are anyway.

Of course, I’m sure there are many good value local eateries in the suburbs, which if I lived there I might have found. The point is that I am not about to head to West London to find something cheap and cheerful when I can do that in my own backyard. 

Some of the finest establishments in the capital can be found in West London, and I have only just begun to scratch the surface. How fortunate then that this is a blogpost and can be updated and added to overtime. I can and will come back to this post and do just that, but for now here are four great restaurants in that part of town.

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My restaurant recommendations: Central London

It won’t come as a surprise that I am regularly quizzed by family, friends and colleagues for restaurant recommendations. It is one of my favourite topics so I don’t mind at all and I always give a very detailed response. You may well regret you asked.

It is helpful to give me some parameters, for example, where? and what price range?

If your answer to these questions is a combination of the below:

... then you will get an essay on the subject. If you can narrow it down a bit then you will get a more concise response.

Where I fall down is when the answer is something like:

When I first moved to London I was more adventurous. I couldn’t believe Londoners were so reluctant to travel beyond their corner of the city, especially given the efficiency of the transport system. Now I am a Londoner and it has to be a very special occasion for me to travel West. Don’t even get me started on South of the river. It’s another world down there.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I think it important to explain in advance why I have so many more recommendations for Central London and the North East; it is not because of a lack of gastronomic flair in the West and South, I just haven’t explored them fully.

You will also notice a weighting towards mid-range in terms of budget because that is what I can afford most of the time.

I start here with Central London and will follow with North, South, East and West, though not necessarily in that order. 

I am always open to new recommendations so please leave comments with your favourites. If I try them and like them, I will add them to the list.

Happy dining.

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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

When Dinner by Heston Blumenthal opened it seemed the whole culinary world was talking of nothing else. Bloggers and critics alike were singing its praises; not even A.A. Gill could find a negative word to say about it. Getting a booking was like a local trying to get a ticket to the 100 metre final at the London Olympics.

Now, almost a year on, the hype has died down but dinner at Dinner is still an improbability. So I opted for a lunch booking and in the end a leisurely lunch (four hours!) was the perfect way to savour the experience. And who better to share it with than the only person I know who loves Heston more than me, Alex – aka Blumenthal’s Biatch. 

I have had a lot of fine meals in my life – but not because my life has been especially privileged by western standards; where other young women might have spent their first earnings on the latest fashion, I spent mine on dining out. This was definitely in the top three meals of my life.

Part of the attraction for me was that it had all the thought, finesse and elegance of a fine dining meal, without the ponce. There were no fancy foams or mousses, the portions were generous, the presentation was carefully considered but never at the expense of taste, and not one of the ingredients was superfluous, each had its proper place. 

Still, there is theatre here – Ashley Palmer Watt’s is Heston’s protégé after all. The signature dish, and probably my favourite, not least because it managed to live up to expectations, was the Meat Fruit,  a chicken liver parfait encased in mandarin jelly and modelled to look like a mandarin. It was astonishingly realistic, even the jelly was textured to look like the skin. A.A. Gill described it as “A perfect mandarin orange that smells like mandarin, even minutely examined it looks like a mandarin, but, cut open, it is immensely fine chicken liver parfait.”

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Two for ten Tuesday at Public House

It is rare that I get round to writing up a casual dinner date in a local restaurant. It is even rarer that I do so the next day, but I just couldn’t believe the amazing value I experienced at Public House last night.

As I said, it was a casual dinner date and so I did not take notes or spend a lot of time making sure I got the right photos, but looking back on the meal this morning I felt it warranted some attention.

I have only recently started using Top Table; as someone who usually knows exactly where I want to eat and who is willing to pay a premium to eat there, I didn’t think the deals would appeal. I was wrong.

Last week I was supposed to be taking someone to dinner in exchange for their worldly wisdom. It had to be easy to get to from Kings Cross and not too expensive, since I haven’t got a lot of money at the moment. I was pondering various cheap and cheerfuls I know in Islington when my friend, Jen, piped up:

“What about Public House? They often have really good deals on Top Table.”

Suspicious.

“Any good?”

“Yeah, I’ve been there a few times. The food’s great and they do nice cocktails, which I suppose is where they make their money.”

Hmm...

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Neal’s Yard Dairy, choice cheese retailer

Updated on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:02PM by Vix

It is strange the things you miss while travelling. As I got ready to depart Lima for London, after three months on the road in South America, I found myself looking forward to a proper cup of tea, fresh milk and cheddar cheese.

My Dad, Chef Has, would think it blasphemy that my idea of a proper cuppa these days is not the carefully prepared pots of loose leaf tea he reared me on: cups and pot warmed with boiling water, a spoon for each person and one for the pot, drawn for no less than five minutes, milk first and NO strainer: “I’m not scared of bits!” (I never got more than a 6/10 despite my studiousness). No, give me a builder’s any day, lovingly prepared with PG tips. Yes, Dad: tea-bags. 

He does, however, approve of my taste in British cheese and, more specifically, my cheese retailer of choice, Neal's Yard Dairy.

I was lucky enough to discover this prime providore the very week I moved back to the UK four years ago. Foodie friends had told me that Borough Markets should be top of my agenda and so I headed there on my first Friday in The Big Smoke. (I had been advised that Saturday’s should be avoided because of the crowds. Sound advice; I later made the mistake of going on a Saturday and left in an emotional state bordering on suicidal.)

I was blown away by the quality and range of the produce on offer and spent a long time walking back and forth trying to take decisive action but failing miserably. In the process I stumbled across Neal’s Yard Dairy and what can I say? A love affair was born.

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