Where should a tourist go if it’s the first time in London, and you want to try everything in one week? Of course, early in the morning you’ll be performing the cultural program with pictures of “me and Big Ben,” “me and the Tower,” “me and Admiral Nelson. In the evening, your pounding feet and hungry stomach will remind you that London is London, and dinner should be on schedule. Especially since London is full of delicious food, it is impossible to dodge the smells. Kirill Yurovskiy, an expert on London and a frequent visitor to the city, recommends 7 addresses.
Meat and Fish
The best place to experience English roast beef is Minsky’s restaurant in the Danubis Hotel near Regent’s Park, and it will cost you around £20 without a drink, but it’s a buffet, so God willing you to take away everything you manage to eat.
I would recommend the Poppies chain for the chips & chips and it will cost you about 15 quid.
If London and English steak are inseparable in your mind, you are welcome to Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, where you can get an Aberdeen bullock steak for about £60-70.
By the way, the Simpsons should be told separately. For example, if you’ve walked around Trafalgar Square, chatted with Admiral Nelson and taken pictures with his lions, and the evening doesn’t seem quite complete, don’t fall for McDonald’s and other eateries. Respect tradition – walk straight down the Strand, past the Oscar Wilde monument, past Her Majesty’s Wallet Bank named Coutts and just about 10 minutes later you’ll see a sign for Simpson’s restaurant on the Strand.
It’s easy to spot by the chess mat at the entrance, which reminds you that it was actually designed as a chess club for decent gentlemen, with sofas for smoking cigars and sipping whisky between unhurried conversations about the eternal, I mean ladies, horses and politics.
Simpson’s still serves authentic British food and not the odd Michelin-starred chef, some unknown 11.5 gram thing for £40 and you don’t know whether to eat it or photograph it.
At Simpson’s you’ll get your roast beef sliced wide open. And the menu here is not some foie gras, pardon God, but good old English steak and kidney pie, and even made according to grandma’s recipe, in a cloth on steam. By the way, they call that pie a pudding, so don’t mistake it for a powerful idea dessert.
Tourists still love the Angus Aberdeen chain because it’s still tasty and much cheaper, but Londoners turn their noses up at these restaurants because only tourists eat there.
English Pies and English Breakfast
All pubs with the word “Pie” in their names are good for the English pie experience. And if you still want to try an authentic worker-peasant Pie & Mash, go to Greenwich, where in a pub with a 200-year history for just £3-5 you can see for yourself that this food, cooked according to Victorian recipes, is absolutely inedible.
Indian food has long been part of the English cuisine, and every Englishman is accustomed since childhood to its peculiar taste. Our taste buds can’t handle the spiciness of authentic Indian cuisine, so if you want it, look for a compromise. Try Gulshaan restaurant in Kentish Town station, you should be able to survive after it for just £25 per nose.
Full English breakfast and afternoon tea should be tried in luxury hotels, because the cooler the hotel, the better the food, weird, right? “Ritz”, “Savoy”, “Dorchester”, “Claridges” are all monsters in about the same price range and will please you with champagne tea for £60-70 and breakfast for £10-15, delicious plus a nice atmosphere – hats and tails.
All English Cuisine
And if you want all English cuisine in one bottle, edible and expensive, you’re welcome to Michael Caine’s restaurant. Everyone knows who the lovely Michael Caine is, right? Never mind that he comes from working-class and utterly poor southeast London and once had a distinctly Cockney London working-class accent in a past life. His accent has long since been corrected, the world and the hearts of all the girls on the planet have been won, and now, for his services and true talent, he is, by the way, a sir and a chevalier of all sorts of biographyer orders.
And so, imagine the 1960s. That’s when his lucky star rose, and he, a simple English guy, moved to Hollywood, where he immediately acquired the status of “superstar” and “hero-lover,” because almost two meters tall beauty, blue-eyed blond and generally a sex symbol, children and cats, cover your ears.
At his service not only the best girls and directors, but also all the restaurants of the world and all kinds of luxurious food, but do not forget that this is a true Englishman, and they do not have everything in their heads like people do. In the midst of all this culinary debauchery, Michael Caine suddenly says, “I’m sick of all your palms and foie gras and oysters and perversions, I can’t stand it!” “I,” he says, “want my favorite simple English pork pie, not this tiny little gimmick on a big, empty plate. Roast beef,” he says, “I want a huge piece. Fish and chips and mashed peas, sorry. And I want London to rain too, turn off that awful California sunshine already!”
So he said and flew to his native island, but his status does not allow him to hang around the diners of the East End, and then he took and opened in 1977 in the middle of the luxurious Mayfair, a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace, a restaurant of authentic English cuisine, although some say it does not exist. It’s kind of Mayfair, which means everything is expensive and status-oriented, made with the best ingredients by Michelin-starred chefs, but the food itself is basic and authentically English.
Here, for example, “liver and bacon”, the food of ordinary working Englishmen, and in the East End café around the corner it will cost you £4. But at Michael Kane’s it’s prepared and served in a classy, expensive and luxurious atmosphere. In short, hostesses take note: If you want authentic English food but it’s edible, then Michael Caine’s Langan’s Brasserie is across the road from Green Park tube station.
