Restaurants
Apparently there are 60 different varieties of rice used to make sake, and none of them are used for eating. Sake is the Japanese alcoholic drink, often known as rice wine but also compared to the likes of vodka and sherry. Although there is a lot of sake on the drinks menu at this restaurant, Saki (recently named in Time Out’s Top 10 vegetarian restaurants in London), means “happiness” in Japanese.
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W4 4PA
London
Chiswick
Barley Mow Passage
Tucked away just off Turnham Green, you could easily miss Sam’s Brasserie and what it has to offer. We visited just as 2009 was gearing up for its heat wave, and people were dusting off the overcast days and stepping out to soak up some sunshine. As we arrived at 8 o’clock, it was that perfect time of the day when the sun sinks, the temperature dips and cocktails call.
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An oasis amid drab office blocks, See Café was calm, inviting, welcoming and friendly. Set in the developing Paddington Basin area of London, its location predisposes it to being a lunch venue, although See Café also boasts a criminally overlooked restaurant. And it was this that we had come to inspect, chopsticks – or in my partner’s case, spoon and bib in hand.
Welcoming and friendly not only describes the atmosphere, but the staff too.
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WC2H 9AT
London
Seven Dials
1a Short Gardens
Much like the entrance to the fabled riads throughout Morocco, the threshold of Souk is an inauspicious one off a quiet road in Seven Dials. From the street, a few low tables and lamps are visible but no activity of any kind, and certainly no indication of the fun to be had beyond the flickering flames. Follow the curving tunnel entrance around however and, as with the riad, you find yourself drawn to and soon enveloped by the sounds, and sweet smells of North Africa.
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It could be the sheer romanticism of St Pancras International that has a positive effect on its commuters, or perhaps it’s that for once, as you set foot inside one of London’s major train stations – there’s somewhere decent to eat. We all know that food affects your mood, which might explain why the caffeine-slugging, burger-munching crowds at Waterloo will quite happily slam into fellow commuters, only stopping for a second try if you don’t fall over the first time.
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Having done a bit of shopping in Cork, European city of Culture of 2007, we stumbled upon the Strasbourg Goose. Only two minutes earlier I had claimed not to be hungry, however, faced with the specials menu I suddenly found a wee space.
We were greeted by a well intentioned if slightly confused waitress who added rather than detracted from the cafe ambience of the place. The Strasbourg Goose is the kind of place you walk into thinking “this is either going to be really good or really bad”.
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SW3 5UH
London
Chelsea
312 - 314 Kings Road
Brazil and Japan: well, we’ve tried quite a range of fusion cuisines in our time, but as my guest and I walked into an almost empty Sushinho from the calm of a Chelsea Monday evening, we were apprehensive about what we’d find on the menu. How could the flavours of two such different cultures find a harmonious blend? But with the first sip of a tropical Sushinho Sakeirinha cocktail (adorned with fruit, like the costume of a passista at her first Rio carnival) I began to relax, enjoying the blend of saké and tropical juice.
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WC2R 2PR
London
London Temple Place
Swissôtel The Howard
The new launch of TLSee (tea, London, sightseeing) at the Swissôtel The Howard allows you to indulge in traditional afternoon tea whilst dunking and nibbling your way through London’s most iconic sights.
The setting of our quintessential British excuse to eat way too many cakes during the middle of the day, is the contemporary Mauve Lounge at the front of the Swissôtel The Howard.
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Tamarai is a nightclub set in a dimly lit basement, with low-slung ceilings and black walls. It is not somewhere I would normally think to go for a Friday lunch and apparently not somewhere that had thought of offering lunch at all, until last month. It appeared, when we first arrived, that they had forgotten to let anyone else know. We entered the wide expanse of the club with beautifully laid out tables, and realised that it was just us and the seven or so waiters wandering around.
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