An editor's guide to eating around town
London is the biggest city in Europe, and has enough top-flight restaurants to make its hungry, hungry denizens the biggest in Europe as well. Luckily, surprisingly svelte Thrillist editor Jason Allen is here to guide you through the chaos, and to only London's finest eateries.
Favourite Restaurant: Obviously a choice like this depends what I'm in the mood for, and, 23hrs of the day, that's steak. So my favourite spot at the moment's Hawksmoor Seven Dials. It has amazing food, some of the city's best cocktails, and you can get a corn flake-milk milkshake with bourbon for dessert
Best Late-Night Eats: Duck & Waffle. Not only can you get an all-day breakfast with foie gras, brioche, and Nutella, but "all-day" includes 4am. Plus, it's on the 40th floor of the Heron Tower, so there's that too
Best Cheap Eats: Definitely Flat Iron in Soho, where you can get a tender & delicious steak for just a tenner, or the same price as a single drink in most other places
Best Sandwich: If anybody says anything other than the salt beef at Brick Lane Beigel, then I respect their opinion, but they're wrong, and they have no taste
Best Dish: Roast bone marrow at St John -- this is Anthony Bourdain's favourite dish (ever) for a reason, and that reason is because it tastes like a million angels are massaging your tongue.
Best Italian: For me, it's got to be Bocca Di Lupo. Supremely simple regional dishes, and, holy balls, is the suckling pig delicious
Best Chinese: Bar Shu specializes in Sichuan cooking, which apparently means the chef is on a personal mission is to immolate your tongue with chillis & exotic spices. You can get extremely unusual ingredients (lung, jellyfish, etc.), and if there are four of you, don't miss the opportunity to have a huge bronze hot pot placed in the middle of your table to fondue various cuts of meat in firey broth
Best Mexican: Mexican food has only recently become a thing in the UK, but the top of the pile has to be Death By Burrito. It's in a dive bar (which feels somehow appropriate. Is that wrong?), but the food's anything but run-down, from grilled duck burritos to delicious lobster ceviche
Best Food Truck: As far as food trucks go, it's hard to best the Pizza Pilgrims considering they personally built a stone pizza oven in the back of a Citroen, then drove it around Italy learning how to make the best 'za. They're usually in Soho, and they'll flash-cook a whole sourdough number in 90 seconds for a fiver
Best Burger: Honestly, if you're going to Burger & Lobster and don't order the lobster because you're temporarily paralyzed by the realization that you're basically eating a giant bug, then the burger is worth it. They use a secret chuck/sirloin blend, lay it on house-made brioche, and serve it on a silver platter. A silver platter
Most Gut-Busting Dish: It has to be the Dino Ribs at the Blues Kitchen. Only avail on Mondays, it's 2.5 kilos of meat served with dipping sauce, and by the end of it, you'll be begging for death's sweet kiss while, for some godforsaken reason, still eating
Best Fine Dining: Viajante is run by Nuno Mendes, a real rising star in the culinary world. It's tasting-menus-only, and those menus're loaded with stuff like brill with duck tongues, toasted milk, mushroom floss, and scallop w/ licorice.
Most Romantic: Clos Maggiore -- the only way this place could satisfy a woman any more would be if they plastered the walls with Notebook DVDs
Best for Partying: In addition to good food, Floridita has a rum shack, regular live bands, and a dance floor they can rock
Best for Work: If what you want is good service, good food, and a professional atmosphere, 1 Lombard Street has all that in spades. Oh, and they offer a 14-birds-within-other-birds Tudor Roast. Ya
Best Lunch: Arbutus is the best-value Michelin-starred restaurant in the UK, and you can nab a three-course lunch menu for less than 20 quid, which is almost cheaper than a Pizza Express, for God's sake
Best Brunch: It's all about The Modern Pantry. Where else can you can get eggs Benedict w/ tea-smoked salmon & yuzu hollandaise? Or a sugar-cured prawn omlette? Seriously, if you know, maybe you should be a local editor
Weirdest Food: Until they properly audit a single Tesco hot dog, the wearer of London's "weirdest food" crown is definitely Archipelago. You can get spiced zebra roulade, seared crocodile fillet w/ plum sauce, and a hefty bison steak
Best Donuts: Electric Donuts, by a country mile. Their stuff changes every day, and you can get flavors like maple-bourbon, Mexican chocolate, pistachio glaze... great, now I really want some donuts.
