Restaurants
Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill keeps good company on Swallow Street, with Veeraswamy occupying this quiet stretch too, just off the main drag. Bentley’s is a quintessentially English affair with charm oozing out at every angle from its plush pinstripe seating, and starched white tablecloths.
There is seating outside at Bentley’s, but the English weather was standing firm with its “no sunshine here” policy, forcing us indoors for warmth and comfort.
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YO1 8QP
York
6 - 8 St. Helen’s Square,
The first Bettys tea room opened its doors ninety years ago. Since then a little family of Bettys tea rooms have sprung up around Yorkshire, and there they stay. Bettys are dedicated to keeping their brand “small and special”, and despite much call for them to expand, they remain exclusive to Yorkshire. Restaurants as popular as Bettys can afford to demand that the rest of the country go to them.
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KT1 1P
Kingston-Upon-Thames
2 Bishop’s Hall (off Thames Street),
This roomy riverside pub, housed close to Kingston Bridge used to have a bit of a reputation as a not-so-salubrious drinking hole. The clientele wern’t the classiest bunch, and drunk lads propping up the bar were de rigueur. I can’t recall ever eating here before – just nursing the odd pint of Pimms (available on tap, woo hoo!), when it was sunny enough to sit outside and soak up the river view.
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As the bistro is tucked inside The Gore Hotel, it’s the kind of place you could walk past for years, only to fall into it one random evening and curse yourself for not having found it sooner. This place has long been a popular eatery with the audiences and performers that fill up the Royal Albert Hall night after night, and is suitably classy with its Kensington postcode.
We made our visit during the lunchtime slot and filled up on starters of saffron risotto and chicken liver pate.
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W1T 3NB
London
37 Berners Street
Black & Blue has been described as ‘an almost default choice for a decent steak of perfectly grilled burger’ (Zagat Guide, 2010). We’d heard some mixed reviews about the place recently, so we went to Black & Blue on Mortimer Street (their latest restaurant), to check it out for ourselves.
Inspired by American chophouses, Black & Blue has a contemporary look and feel. A look and feel that appears to dictate, as much as it reflects, the restaurant’s trendy clientele.
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SE1 2YD
London
Shad Thames Design Museum
Blueprint Cafe, Design Museum
Situated above the Design Museum next to the monumental Tower Bridge, Blueprint Café delivers simple, seasonal dishes that wrap you up in a smug blanket of bliss. This restaurant is on the small side, but remains light and airy with a subtle hint of nautical décor. The floor to ceiling windows reveal a glorious backdrop of the River Thames and the City of London, and a cute pair of mini binoculars on each table allows you to explore the views (or a close-up of other peoples food!
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W1F 9DF
London
1 Upper James Street,
This brilliantly eccentric eatery lies on Upper James Street, just off Carnaby Street. One of the first things that we noticed as we slipped into our leather booth was the 'Press for Champagne' button, just above the table. This is the kind of place where you should crack open a bottle of bubbly at lunch time. Speaking of which, during July 2010, to celebrate BobBobRicard’s new house Champagne, Bobis pouring a complementary glass of Pol Roger with every lunch ordered.
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SE1 2TU
London
136 – 148 Tooley Street
5th floor, Magdalen House
I’ve long lamented that, because I don’t live on the coast, the freshest seafood is usually beyond my reach. But stuff me with butter and bay, and douse me in pouilly fumé if the seaside didn’t come to me. For two weeks at least.
From the 5th to the 21st of July,the British seaside and some of its choicest fruits moved inland to our capital.
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E2 7JE
London
2-4 Boundary Street
Boundary restaurant,
Set in the basement of a restored Victorian warehouse, the Boundary restaurant injects a good dose of swank and swagger into this area of East London. Earlier this year, Terence Conran and his wife Vicki partnered with Peter Prescott to unleash the Boundary project onto the cobbled backstreets of Shoreditch. An ambitious venture comprising of three restaurants (Boundary, Albion and Rooftop Terrace), a bakery, food store and 17 lavishly designed bedrooms.
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