Shawarmarama

London has one definite, vibrant and distinct Lebanese area: Edgware Road. The area between Edgware Road station and Marble Arch – the end part of a road built by the Romans which stretches to Holyhead in Wales – is home not only to many Lebanese joints, but also to countless other Middle Eastern cafes, restaurants, nightclubs and grocers. If you are in London and want to eat the famous Lebanese street food of Shawarma, then this is the place to come.

English: Edgware Road tube station (Circle/District/Hammersmith & City lines) platforms roundel (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in London and want to eat the famous Lebanese street food of Shawarma, then this is the place to come. 

Shawarma can be found across inner west London – Knightsbridge, Earl’s Court and Kensington for instance – but not so much in the rest of London. Shoreditch has a few offerings, but other than Golders Green (which offers Israeli-style Shawarma) and a few sad places dotted around town which never seem to last long, there are few really good shawarma places to be had.

The delicious and addictive grilled meat – rather oily and salty, usually served in a flat-bread – is best served with chilli, lemon and tahini and eaten sparingly (though once you’ve eaten one you’ll want a second). OK it’s a kebab, really, but then again, its the king of kebabs and you shouldn’t feel guilty about eating one (once in a while). Choose the lamb version.

Among the best London places to sample this unsung hero of street foods are, mostly, in one stable of restaurants: the Maroush chain. My personal favourite is Ranoush Juice, 43 Edgware Road, which opened in 1981. I have been attending ever since. Ranoush also also does delicious fruit juices sold in a 1.5 litre bottle.  Beirut Express (also Maroush stable) is also excellent and has a branch in Brompton Road as well. Avoid the disappointing shawarma look-a-likes in Leicester square and head to Holborn, where Hiba Express is a good West End bet.  

An American Pancake in London

I am continuing my quest of trying to recreate, in London, the experience of my favourite breakfast of all time: a stack of American buttermilk pancakes, plus at least three cups of (admittedly watery) coffee. London providers of ‘American breakfasts’ take note. I am still waiting …

The challenge

The are a numbers of factors to get right here:

1. The pancakes need to be thick, light and fluffy and made with buttermilk, not with any fancy flour or other ingredient: no buckwheat or ricotta.
2. The syrup – and this is key – has got to be maple-flavour syrup and NOT real maple syrup. On the hundreds of occasions i have eaten pancakes across the length and breadth of the US and Canada I have been served real maple syrup maybe twice. Maple syrup has an unpleasant drying effect on the mouth and is very expensive and so usually served in absurdly small quantities. Golden syrup and other UK-derived substitutes not acceptable. Aunt Jemima or similar please.
3. Toppings. There are only a few accompaniments. They are blueberries (best cooked in the batter), crispy streaky bacon and sausage. i know there are other options on many US diner menus but i’m afraid they rarely include some of the fancy ones included on London restaurant’s poshed-up attempts at this classic working class breakfast classic.
4. One ingredient to this feast that i have never found in London (but you would almost always get in the States is whipped butter. In fact, in my experience, pancake in London are almost exclusively sold without butter, although often with greek yoghurt, crème fraîche, ice cream, vanilla cream or other such ‘twists’ (I think you should only add a twist to something if there are lots of other people doing the basic formula).
5. Coffee. OK so American diner coffee is usually pretty awful and can definitely be improved upon. But I do like the fact that you are offered endless free refills, which is still rare in London.
6. Service. OK I might be going too far here for London, but American diner waitresses and waiters are almost exclusively naturally friendly, attentive (without being over-bearing) and nice (unless you fail to tip them).
7. Atmosphere. I am not expecting the place to packed with Americans but it should have decent mix of people (not just tourists or businessmen.
8. The price. 10 quid what is mainly flour eggs and milk is not acceptable. Breakfast should be cheaper than lunch and dinner. Dispense with the berries and maple syrup and give us what we want.

These elements have been recreated in parts in some places but not altogether anywhere, as far as i know. here are some versions i have tested:

The pancakes at Grill Shack in Soho.

• (Admittedly a while ago) at Ed’s Easy Diner, Euston branch – nicely priced and reasonable pancakes (are they really buttermilk?) with abominable (claiming to be maple) syrup. Rubbery back bacon. But coffee with free refills (reluctantly) and vaguely American (1950’s) ambiance.
• Frankie and Benny’s – similar to Ed’s – with slightly less good pancakes and poor syrup. Reluctant freefills. full of (mostly disappointed) tourists. Addition of ice cream goes well with the hotcakes but is not authentic. Riduclous surroundings are faux-Italian-American-a-la-corporate-boardroom-brainstorm.
• Smith’s of Smithfield’s – reasonable price and fair pancakes. tiny amount of maple syrup. No refills. nothing like a US diner but then it’s not trying to be. Off-hand waiting staff.
• (Also a long time ago) Garfunkel’s. very poor (microwaved?) pancakes with some sort of dodgy syrup that at least doesn’t pretend to be maple. Rubbish free refill coffee is available however.
• Grillshack – new kid on the block with decent buttermilk pancakes (albeit with the questionable addition of apple in the batter) at £3.50. Coffee in US style diner mugs include one refill (why only one?). No butter offered (but provided on request). Small pot of maple syrup. Counter service plus annoying waiters who mainly endlessly ask you if everything’s OK with your food (which is not being friendly just annoying).
• Giraffe – poor syrup and reasonable pancake for 7 quid in bland chain restaurant surroundings. Addition of blueberries adds something but no butter, no refills on coffee. Disinterested service.
• The Diner Decent US-style pancakes but again maple syrup in small quantities and no butter. But free refill coffee (if you can get the attention of the waitress) and perhaps the best approximation of the diner vibe (if a little touristy).

People talk about the pancakes at mini-chains Balans (which reassuringly has branches in London and Miami) and the Breakfast Club (which i have been to and liked but not tried the pancakes). Please let me have your recommendations for American pancakes in London.

see also http://hereisthecity.com/2010/02/15/the-perfect-american-pancake-in-london/ and http://www.yelp.co.uk/search?find_desc=american+pancakes&find_loc=London

Jewish-ish London (falafel and salt beef really)

Being half Jewish on my Dad’s side (it doesn’t really count apparently) I should know a bit more about London’s Jewish eating scene. In my youth I was taken to places like Bloom’s in Whitechapel (long since closed – now a Burger King!), the Brick Lane Beigel Bake and Tubby Isaac’s stall round the corner on Aldgate, which reportedly has sadly closed this summer.

Although I never really got starchy east European Jewish comfort food – knishes, dumplings, lockshen pudding, etc – I have always loved Salt beef sandwiches and am keen on a good chicken soup. But perhaps because my Dad’s family are Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi (where most of the Jews – and hence Jewish food – in London comes from), my taste buds are drawn towards Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian flavours. In fact my dad comes from Calcutta, where a small Jewish community ended up in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The two dishes I tend to seek out are the aforementioned salt beef sandwich and falafel, which is not really Jewish per se but a dish found throughout the Middle East and incredibly popular in Israel.

In terms of good falafel in London, there are a few choices, but only one to me that stands out for me, being properly reminiscent of Israel, where falafel is served everywhere at food stands. That place is Pita in Golders Green, which wins not only on flavour and freshness (always cooked to order; two types of falafel balls: one from chick peas and the other from broad beans i think), but also on the fact that it is run by Israelis and there always a few Israelis hanging around the tiny space, which makes it feel authentic.

An honourable mentions also go to Pilpel – a excellent mini chain of falafel shops which claims to be from a family recipe (places that rely on family recipes are almost always better than those created by companies).

Despite there being many street food stalls around London’s markets selling falafel, most are pretty poor in my experience. A reported exception seems to be ChickP which i have yet to try.

On the Salt Beef front there are quote a few good places. The Brass Rail at Selfridges and Reubens are two good but expensive options (the latter feels far less touristy though). The best value is to be had at the aforementioned Brick Lane Beigel Bake, and at Salt Beef Bar in Temple Fortune. The Sal Beef bar is run by two elderly (non-Jewish) Greek brothers who, by all accounts, have perfected Jewish food. peronally i find the salt beef at I have also heard good things about Mishkin’s in Covent Garden, though yet made it there. I am not a fan of the salt beef at the Delaunay Counter or Gaby’s.

My personal favourite, however, is the B&K Salt Beef Bar in Edgware, which sells its own made salt beef in excellent rye caraway bread along with the necessary English mustard and sweet and sour pickles to a never ending tribe of happy customers at all times of day. I have been going to B&K’s since i was a kid and although it has moved locations, the Salt beef is still as good as anywhere i have found.

I’d be keen to to hear your recommendations for falafel and salt beef, let me know.

The Real Chinatown – An Obituary

The Oriental City Food Court (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oriental City shopping centre, Colindale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With almost mythical status, Oriental City was known to some as the ‘real Chinatown’ where many Chinese and other East and South-East Asian Londoners came to eat, shop and congregate. Situated on the Edgware Road in Colindale, it boasted regional Chinese restaurants, Dim Sum and, famously, a food court that was highly reminiscent of Singapore, with food from China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and Korea. The overall experience was very different from Chinatown. This place was by no means a tourist destination and was a meeting point for the East Asian community in London.

Sadly the complex closed in 2008 to make way for ‘redevelopment’. I only made it there once. At present the site still lies empty, the developers long since having fallen victim to the financial crisis. Recently, a Morrisons has been connected with the site. Just what we need.

Apparently a similar complex called Pacific Plaza existed between 2009 and 2011, a in Wembley Retail Park, but I never heard about it, perhaps explaining it’s relatively short life (Oriental City had traded since at least the 1980s).

Dont be too disheartened: there are at least two places nearby that i can recommend: Wonderful Patisserie (an Oriental City refugee), and Wing Yip and Wing Tai which are both part of a large Chinese Supermarket chain. Wing Tai has excellent barbecue. If you know of another place similar to Oriental City, please let me know.

Do your wurst

Thüringer Rostbratwürste (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I am half German, on my mother’s side. This means that many of my food memories from childhood (and, let’s face it, adulthood) involve eating sausage.

 

Having been for many years a wasteland for German food and all too often offering poor imitation ‘bratwurst’ at random stalls around the city there is now a sprouting of London’s sausage scene.

 

There are some stalls that do good Bratwurst, notably in Covent Garden, Borough Market and, curiously, sometimes at Alexandra Palace. But three of my favourites sit down places are the annoyingly named Herman Ze German, the overpriced but excellent Kurtz and Lang in Farringdon and the great value the bratwurst in Berwick Street.

 

None of these quite fits the bill in terms of authentic German eating experiences but they are all run by Germans, and, importantly, you don’t have to fly to Germany to get good German sausage anymore which makes senf (sorry).

 

One place to perhaps avoid is the Bavarian Beerhouse. while it attempt to recreate the Bierhaus experience it fails to really do so: the beer is overpriced and the atmosphere limp.

 

The Authentic and the Faux

There are lots of great restaurants (and not so great restaurants) in London serving genuinely good food from around the globe in ‘authentic’ settings. There are Italians that ape Naples, and Cubans that are vaguely like an imagined and sanitised version of Havana. There is nothing wrong with this, but it’s just not that interesting to me.

Some places, like Dishoom’s ex-pop-up on the South Bank, which was supposed to be kitted out like a mumbai beach vendor, tried hard to imbue some sense of place. That’s fine (and the Dahl was really good) but you can’t create authenticity in a boardroom, or a via brainstorm.

Equally, late night tacos in Soho can be satisfying after a few beers but having a collection of dozens of different bottles of habanero and jalapeno sauce does not make the experience any more real or reminiscent.

But there are many places that actually look, feel and taste like the real thing. In order to find a genuine ethnic eating experience in London, or anywhere else, you need to look for three things:

1. No logo – anywhere that has a marketing strategy – or even a facebook page – is unlikely to be what i am looking for.
2. Who’s eating there – it might seem obvious, but look for Germans in a German restaurant, and Koreans in a Korean. They won’t put up with over-inflated prices for food that doesn’t compare with home. If there is no English menu (or no menu at all) that’s even best.
3. Probably best not to look in Soho or Covent Garden. While there are many interesting eating experiences in the West End sky high rents means that people who cater to a local population rarely set up central. Little Korea and Chinatown being obvious exceptions.

I don’t want to discourage people from opening or visiting interesting restaurants and will continue to eat in places that serve good food in nice but ultimately fake surroundings. But it’s more exciting to discover a place of your own, in an out of the way place, with great food and people that means you can spend your lunch hour abroad, without leaving the city limits. You’ll know it when you see it.

Great Green Lanes

English: Green Lanes Haringey (2) This area has many Turkish people, and many of the businesses on Green Lanes are owned by, and cater for, the local Turkish community. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I happen to live near Green Lanes, one of London’s ethnic arteries, which in itself tells a story about London’s varied communities via eating places opened by new generations of Londoners. For decades, immigrants have been drawn to the long and busy road which runs North-South from Stoke Newington to Winchmore Hill.

The road itself -which is no longer green at all and not really a lane either – represents part of an ancient route along which cattle were driven from Hertfordshire to Smithfield Market giving it a permanently transitory feel, but I am less interested in the road itself than the food culture it offers up.

Waves of migrants have settle along Green Lanes, first Greeks, then Turkish and Kurdish, followed by Eastern Europeans. There also West Indian, African and Arabic immigrants – mainly at the Southern end, alongside students and economic refugees from London’s swankier inner-suburbs like Crouch End and Stoke Newington. These émigrés have brought amongst the most authentic and varied regional restaurants and cafés that London has to offer.

If you want to go Turkish, then your best bet is head for either Haringey (the bit between Manor house and Turnpike Lane station) or Stoke Newington. Both offer dozens of choices of straightforward Turkish food, either from the charcoal grill (ocakbasi), or in the form of stews and soups.

Another choice, offered by some places, is pide – a thin pastry-bread which is stuffed with minced meat, cheese or vegetables – skilfully made by women sitting within the dining area, wearing (unnecessarily) ‘village dress’ – a version of traditional Turkish dress that I doubt is really worn by village women very much anymore. Most places don’t offer alcohol but most sell ayran, a slightly salty yoghurt drink which is surprisingly refreshing.

One of the best of these Turkish cafes is Diyarbakir in Haringey. The food is fresh and reasonably priced and the service is good. Like most of the Turkish cafes on Green Lanes it is frequented by a mixture of Turks and east Europeans, often eating large portions at strange times of day. Try the lentil soup or the cop sis. Many people head for Gokyuzu  which is very popular with non-Turks and often

If you are unlucky enough to find yourself in Wood Green go directly to the Crystal restaurant. The bread is baked on the premises and the lentil soup is dependably soothing. Although the clientele is mixture of East Europeans, Turks and other assorted shoppers, the food is authentic enough to keep you away from the horrors of Wood Green Shopping City.

Another good place is Beyti, in Newington Green, famed for its Northern Turkish mezze and friendly atmosphere, although you are as likely to find clubbers and pubbers as Turkish Londoners. Don’t miss a trip to one of the many pastry-specialists serving varieties of filo-and-nut sweetmeats – variants of baklava. I like Antepliler Patisserie baklava salon – next door to its sister restaurant of similar name which also worth a visit.

But what draws Turks and others from all over the area is the bakery and grocery store called Yasir Halim. Yasir’s sells cheap, hot bread, a variety of cakes, patisserie, pastries and snacks, as well as olives, meat, fruit and veg (of variable quality but invariably low price) and even its own-recipe houmous. Always crowded with a mix of Cypriots and students, Yasir’s is a must-do, if you are in the area.

Going further north on Green Lanes you can find a larger population of Greek Cypriots,. The Greeks have moved since there early days in Soho in the 20’s and 30’s, on to the Charlotte street area, then Camden, Finsbury Park, Haringey and Wood Green. Many have now moved into the suburban blandness of Southgate, Palmers Green and Enfield

Unfortunately, the culinary traditions have not migrated wholesale with the population. The most interesting area in terms of eating is Palmers Green (“Palmers Greek” for the witty). There are some good bakeries and a couple of good grocers and still few large-scale mezze-and-dancing places dotted along the length of Green Lanes, catering to large parties of Greeks and non-Greeks alike, where you can eat until you explode. But stand-outs such as Paneri and Adamos in Palmers Green are testament to days gone by, and cater mainly to Greek families or small groups of men who gather to reminisce over Pork Souvlaki, mezze and Kleftiko.

http://www.greeklondon.co.uk/

The India Club at The Strand Continental Hotel

Sounds posh, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. The India Club restaurant, on the second floor of a similarly ageing hotel, does retain a measure of colonial era grace, gently mixed with the institutional feel of India’s post-colonial semi-statist times. Almost unchanged in 60 years or more, the restaurant feels likeably stuck in a time warp, with bored waiters sporting weathered white tunics. It reminds me of an India where mid-range restaurants had a bureaucratic air, slightly (but not unpleasantly) unwelcoming, and waiters tended to be curt, if not downright rude. At the India Club they are not ‘Wong Kei‘ rude, just off -hand, as if their jobs were were forever guaranteed by the state. The waiter who served me today has been there 25 years.

The India Club used to serve mainly the bureaucrats at the Indian High Commission across the road and, although a few still come here, some have reportedly come to prefer other establishments such as Sagar, which does far better dosas and chats (as well as a great taake away lunch box).

There is also a bar on the first floor, which again makes you feel like you are in an Indian time warp, this time in a cheap hotel bar in Calcutta or Thiruvananthapuram, where service is slow, and deliberately so.

In many ways, the food is also stuck in a time warp, though not in the way a suburban Indian restaurant in a provincial town might be. It’s not English-Indian, or Bangladeshi-Indian. But neither is it totally authentically devoted to one region of India.  The best of the food is South Indian (the current owner is from Chennai) and it’s not bad, although you don’t need to come here especially for the food. You should come to the India Club if you want an experience an antidote to modern life, which, reportedly, is rubbish.

What is London Food Memories and who is it for?

London Food Memories is blog about food in London (mainly), but it is not about mainstream restaurants and high-end food. It follows my quest to seek out places that not only mimic the tastes and textures that I once had on my travels but also that recreate the whole experience of being in that other place, where you feel like you’ve left England and been transported to Gujarat, San Sebastian or Rio.

I also want to get your recommendations for authentic and interesting London spots that are frequented by people from the place that it is serving food from, and that can tell the difference between something that calls itself “Mumbai street food” a place that actually smells, looks, feels, talks and tastes like a Mumbai street food stall.

In the coming months I’ll be writing about some of my favourite places for stepping out of London and into another country without boarding a plane or train: The Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square, Le Relais de Venice in Marylebone , the Nordic Bakery in Golden Square and Chennai Dosa in Wembley. I’ll also review pockets of London where particular types of food are represented authentically: Palmers Green for Greek food, Green Lanes in Haringey for Turkish food, Stockwell for Brazilian and Portuguese food and the bit behind Centrepoint for Korean food.

i am also interested in the best execution of certain food in London: like the best Salt Beef (i reckon it is B&K’s in Edgware), falafel (Pita in Golders Green), or the even best pie and mash (I love Clarke’s in Exmouth Market). 

I work every day and have four kids so don’t expect a blog every day but i’ll try and tweet occasionally as well on London Foodmemories.