Restaurants
SW1A 1HD
London
33 St James Street
Brasserie St. Jacques
Brasserie St. Jacques has hit the nail on the head with its typical French fare, casual yet upscale dining, faux dated decor and live opera at your table.
Despite being located in the swanky area of St. James Street, this restaurant remains pleasantly laid-back, rather than stuffy. There was plenty of loud chatter filling the room even when the two opera singers were hitting their show stopping high notes on the night we visited.
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TW9 1SX
Richmond upon Thames
5 Hill Street
When Andy Fisher returned to the UK after a few years of working in Belgium, he brought back with him two things: a love of the Belgian approach to food (mussels in particular), and a keen desire to share his love of it with others. So, Brouge was born. It started life as a laid back, family-friendly eatery at the back of the Old Goat pub on the Twickenham and Teddington border, and became so popular and busy that Andy decided to expand.
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Diners flock in and out of Browns St Martin’s Lane location on a daily basis, traipsing in for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The restaurant, which has recently undergone complete refurbishment, has a definite French café style about it, with waiters bustling in between tables with cups of good smelling coffee and plates of hot food. This Browns location (there are fourteen restaurants dotted around the UK), is a sizeable affair with plenty of café-style tables and booths filling up the high-ceilinged space, tucked into every nook and cranny.
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EH6 6DE
Edinburgh
Leith
60 Henderson Street,
The Shore of Edinburgh’s Leith area is a bit of a culinary hot spot. No less than three Michelin-starred establishments share the neighbourhood with time-honoured bistro’s, bars serving gastropub fare and a plethora of excellent seafood restaurants. On a fine day The Shore is alive with the sound of laughter and music, crowds spill out onto the street to enjoy late afternoon sun and the air is thick with anticipation of the evening’s revelry which doubtless starts with dinner.
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If you’ve never ventured out to Bray for dinner, here’s a piece of advice: take a map. Unless you’re a local and know the surrounding winding roads like the back of your hand, it’s probably a good idea to come armed with one of those fancy satellite navigation gizmos or a foolproof set of directions. Once we eventually located Caldesi In Campagna, we ran from the car, through a smattering of evening rain, into the warm, dry confines of the Caldesi’s latest restaurant.
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Good things are happening in King’s Cross. Firstly St Pancras opened on time and with a serious amount of “Ooooh ahhhhhh” factor, and then Spanish bar Camino went and got itself voted Best Bar in Britain by the Observer. They say good things come in threes, but I don’t know what the third one is. Sorry.
Quite happy with the notion of finding out if good-thing-number-two was in fact any good, we jumped on the Northern line and headed for Regent Quarter, a respectable looking oasis of moderate calm just off Pentonville Road.
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EC1V 9LA
London
301 Old Street,
I had wondered about praise on Cay Tre’s website, which calls it “the best Vietnamese canteen in Hoxton” – just how many Vietnamese canteens could there possibly be in such a small area? However, after an enlightening walk down Kingsland Road and Old Street, passing on my way more Vietnamese restaurants than I could count on my fingers, I realised that this praise is high indeed.
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If you make your entrance into St Pancras from the sooty depths of the tube, it makes first impressions of this historical building all the more grand. Red brick, wrought iron and glass pane after glass pane, make up the vast expanse that is St Pancras International. It’s a breathtaking expanse too, and delivers a sense of old fashioned travel, wrapped up with excitement and a sense of occasion. The glass roof travels the length of the building and catches many an upward gaze from admiring commuters.
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EC4A 2BP
London
142 Fleet Street
When Chilango launched back in October 2008, the Mexican haunt gave away free burritos one Friday to lure customers in. There wasn’t really any need for cajoling on Chilango’s part though, as a queue formed down Fleet Street that didn’t dwindle until the place actually run out of burritos somewhere around 9pm.
The giveaway got Chilango noticed (with around 250 burritos flying out of the door every hour), and on the night we dropped in for some Mexican nourishment, there was a regular stream of custom.
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