Eating our Fill, continued: London 2024, Part 8

We’re wrapping up tales of our trip to London. It turns out that we ate at interesting places more than we did just about anything else (… whoops?) so as we round third and head for home what we have to share are a collection of mini reviews for some of the places we ate while we were there. For example:

Beck’s Cafe is the kind of place we all want in our neighborhood. Good service, better food, large portions, and reasonable prices. What drew us was the promise of pancakes, and what they call jacket potatoes — Russets or baking in the U.S. J.’s breakfast was a classic: 2 hotcakes, 2 eggs, scrambled, with sausage patties and orange juice. He was in heaven. I went a different rout and ordered the jacket potato with sauteed mushrooms, onions, spinach, and cheese.

Something like this:

Yeah baby.

It was easily the biggest potato I’ve seen in my life, and covered with the veg. Perfect. I only ate half, and enjoyed the rest for lunch the next day. Add in a couple of fresh-squeezed orange juices, a latte for me, and the 15% service charge . . . the bill was a bit over US$50.

28 Red Lion St, London, United Kingdom

Cocoro Japanese Restaurant has several locations, we got delivery from the one in Marleybone. Cocoro was a nice change of pace for us in several ways. First, we hadn’t had any in the weeks we’d been in London already, second, the Japanese served at home focuses on sushi, a few commonly known appetizers (like gyoza), and sometimes with bits of other Asian cuisines thrown in. Teriyaki, yakitori, or katsu are unknown.

So, we went to town!

Chicken katsu, salmon teriyaki, miso soup, vegetable and prawn tempura, and gyoza all were ordered and consumed with great enjoyment. Total bill $55.

25 Coptic Street London WC1A 1NT

Recommend to us by our hosts as the best fish & chips in town, North Sea Fish Restaurant is just at the edge of our neighborhood, a very pleasant walk.

They are super busy, seemingly all day. Certainly we arrived a bit after their opening at 5pm and had to wait to be seated (although maybe it was more about a change of shifts, they seemed very low on staff). We were given menus . . . and then waited. No water. No order taking. Just a very long wait (about 15 mins). On the bright side, we knew exactly what we wanted when the waiter returned. We felt intimidated about asking questions, however, and I particularly felt rushed into choosing an item. Food didn’t take too long to get to us after that.

But it was oddly bland. Huge portion sizes — seriously large pieces of batter fried fish with large sides of chips (fries). But the fries were a lot more interesting than the fish, which at least didn’t tast fishy, just bland. Their onion rings were great. Fries are unlimited (the waiter made a big deal about that), so that’s great if you want to go to town on fries? With a glass of wine and soda, this was about $50.

Apparently they have a take out shop next door, and people say that’s the best place to go. Same food, fresh made, and half the price.

7/8 Leigh Street
London
WC1H 9EW