Offbeat Eats

There are few London traditions of mine as sacred as going out for a good old-fashioned fry-up: a “Full English” breakfast, with at least bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, and toast, and I usually like to add even more to that (at a minimum, tomatoes, and usually black pudding as well). In the area around Pimlico, there’s exactly one place that anyone should even consider for that, and it’s the classic greasy spoon, The Regency Cafe. Virtually every trip of mine to London, even short ones, involve a trip to The Regency, except for holiday trips where they are closed. Indeed, one of my earliest reviews here in 2007 was for The Regency.

One of the joys of going to London is that it gives me a lot of opportunities to explore cuisines that I usually don’t find in New England, and may even have trouble finding in the US at all. In this case, my visit gave me a good chance to visit a second location of Iberia that recently had opened a short walk from my Brother’s London flat. To get something out of the way, “Iberia” is an interesting placename; Western European and North American English speakers usually use this term referring to Spain and Portugal (the Iberian Peninsula, after the ancient Greek name for the river, Íbēros), but the term also applies to another ancient geographical region almost 4000 km to the east, the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli, which was also known to the Greeks as Iberia. So Iberia in Pimlico is serving up classic Georgian food, and since it has been several years since I last had a foray into Georgian cuisine, we decided to make that our last major meal of my visit.

One of the enjoyable aspects of my London trips is that, in addition to all the great British and Commonwealth cuisines that get good representation, the London metro area has quite a good collection of Turkish restaurants. Previously, I’ve gotten to enjoy Tad in Hackney, and Likya in Golders Green, and particularly Kazan right down the street from my brother’s flat. Kazan isn’t the only Turkish option in Pimlico, either, just around the corner lies Cyprus Mangal. We’ve been there a few times before, when the food was excellent but I would have called the dining room ambiance “cozy”. But sometime in the last few years Cyprus Mangal had a rather major renovation and we decided it was a good opportunity to drop in and give them another try.

Like most years, this year we had another trip to London to visit with my relatives. This trip us arriving while my brother and sister-in-law were traveling, so we had a day and a half to explore London on our own. One place that had long been on our list was a small Chinese place just down the road from my brother’s flat: A. Wong. It’s been a Chinese place the entire time I’ve been visiting London, and circa 2013 changed names to A. Wong when the namesake, took over a small Chinese restaurant from his family. Since then, it’s gotten a fair amount of good press, and had long been on our “hit list” of places to check out. It’s not easy to get a reservation; ideally I’d want to do their “Tastes of China” tasting menu, but that required a 2:45 reservation and those were booked out for weeks. We were, however, able to score a 1:45 reservation for a la carte dining.

One of the cuisines I rather enjoy when I’m in London is Turkish food, since the London area has more than a few really delicious Turkish places. Previously, I’ve rather enjoyed outing to Tad in Hackney, and Likya in Golders Green, and there are literally dozens of other good Turkish restaurants around London. One of these, Kazan, is literally just down the road from my brother’s flat, and it’s been on our to-do list for a while (at least 2009, when we actually had breakfast at their sister restaurant Kazan Kitchen across the street). But various complications seem to always happen when we attempt to go there; three times our visit fell during a period when Kazan was closed for the holidays. Another time, we were unable to secure reservations. Yet another time, a power outage caused us to have to re-plan. But this visit, we made finally visiting Kazan a priority, and were finally able to visit.

Every once in a while it’s nice for me to do a followup on old favorites, revisiting them and make sure that they are staying in form. One of my oldest reviews on this site is almost 12 years old: a visit to the famous Regency Cafe, which is pretty much the canonical British “Greasy Spoon” for the London area, attracting a wide cross-section of London society all looking for the classic, stick-to-your-ribs old-fashioned Full English Breakfast, aka a “Fry up”. Actually, this is probably my dozenth visit to the Regency “Caff” since first coming in 2006, I usually make it a point to visit at least once every trip (although holiday closings and my odd travel schedules have prevented that a few times). So, while they neighborhood has changed a bit (like much of London, sprouting newer, taller buildings), the Regency is still going strong.

As I mentioned in my recent review of Veg As You Go, the street outside my brother’s flat is now home to the fairly busy Tachbrook Street Market, with coffee vendors, fruit and veg vendors, and quite a few food stands. One of the better ones is Pad Thai, a vendor of, well, Newdlez Pad Thai, and the usually are sporting a 30 minute queue for food. But this time, we happened across them on a particularly rainy day, and were able to take advantage of the shorter lines due to the poor weather. Being a street vendor, Pad Thai doesn’t have a huge menu. The main courses are basically Pad Thai (six varieties, including chicken, shrimp, veggies, and related varieties) and Thai curries (yellow, red, green, and panaeng), as well as a few other noodle dishes. They’ve also got a variety of starters.

When my brother moved to London back in 2008, I thought it was neat that the building he lived in had a pub right downstairs. Problem was, that particular pub, the Pimlico Tram, was actually a lousy pub with a not terribly great clientele. But then something marvelous happened: the Pimlico Tram closed, and instead pub owner Martin Hayes refurbished the place and re-opened it as the Cask Pub and Kitchen. And, practically overnight, the lousy pub downstairs became the hip new pub downstairs, with a particularly good selection of British and imported beers, eight hand-pulled handles, and a reasonably good selection of pub grub. And starting that year, they’ve continued a run of excellence, with several awards including multiple winnings of The Publican Magazine Pub of the Year, Great British Pub Awards’ Best Cask Ale Pub in London, and CAMRA’s West London Pub of the Year. Enough so that I can’t even keep track of it. Meanwhile, they’ve been expanding, including more beers on tap, and, more importantly, sister pubs, with several locations of the Craft Beer Co open throughout Greater London (Craft is basically the same concept as Cask, but without the food). I hadn’t reviewed Cask before, since I generally don’t review pubs unless there’s something particularly notable about them or their food, and, quite frankly, I hadn’t been terribly impressed by Cask’s pub food in the past. However, starting in 2012, Cask significantly re-tooled their menu. On Sunday nights they still do the traditional “Sunday Roast”, but the rest of the week their kitchen transforms into Forty Burgers.

Well, after six days in Belgium, it was time to pack up our bags, head back over to Brussels’ Station Midi, and take the Eurostar back to England. Two hours later, we found ourselves back in Central London at St Pancras station, and a short tube ride down the Victoria line had us back in Pimlico. And, after that voyage, we were starting to get hungry, but several days of eating mussels, steaks, filet americain, and the like had us craving something at least a bit healthier, so we decided it was time for a trip down the street to get some falafel. Luckily, my brother lives off of Tachbrook Street, home of the Tachbrook Street Market. While Tachbrook Street has been a nice little street market for several years (longer than I’ve been coming to London), a few years ago the Westminster City Council did a substantial renovation: the road is now more or less permanently a street market and not a vehicular passage, utility hookups are provided for all the vendors (in neat little boxes that fold up out of the street), and most importantly, it has a lot more vendors and more regular hours. Monday through Saturday, 8 am through 6pm, the places is filled with vendors, most of them food vendors, ranging from grocers, to a coffee stand, to prepared food vendors, all selling from their stalls. And one of the more regular vendors is a Middle Eastern falafel joint, Veg As You Go.

One of the more interesting aspects of London is that there are so many good pubs, it can be difficult to experience them all. When we’re visiting London, we’re generally rather spoiled, as my brother and sister-in-law live almost next to the very excellent Cask Pub and Kitchen (which I haven’t reviewed here, since I’ve only ever had bar snacks for food there). The good part of this is that a quality pub with a very good selection of beer is almost always at hand. The down side of this is that I tend to ignore a lot of other good pubs, even ones that are just down the street. One case in point is The Queen’s Arms, which is just down the street from the flat, but until this trip I had only been in there once, and that for a quick pint. Our trip to London, however, was also coincident with my friends Rick and Sarah’s trip to London/Wales/Ireland, and they in particular enjoy getting together with friends from Metafilter (I’m semi-active there as well) for spontaneous meetups. So it was decided that their visit to London was the perfect excuse for a meetup on December 27th. Alas, much of London is shut down around the festive season, with publicans in particular using it as a good opportunity to take a well-earned break from their normal routine. So many of the pubs around Pimlico, including my well-loved Cask, were closed on the 27th. But Queen’s Arms was open, so the meetup was scheduled there instead. I’m rather glad it was, since this finally represented a good opportunity to check out the Queen’s Arms.