London Eats

*Wandering through Chinatown (near Leicester Square) looking at all the menus posted outside, trying to pick a restaurant for dinner.

*Browsing the food halls of Harrod's (Knightbridge). If grocery stores are the museums of food, then this is surely the Louvre.

*Shopping the street markets.

Enjoying the cuisines of the many different nationalities and cultures who have made London their adopted home.

Quick Tips:

*The street markets are a good source of food for a picnic lunch, or even a "picnic" dinner in the hotel.

*Ethnic restaurants often offer relatively inexpensive, good food.

*A full English breakfast is enormous -- eggs, sausage, bacon (closer to what Americans know of as ham), grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, toast (cooled in a rack) -- if your hotel includes it, you may not need to eat lunch!

*For the most part, sandwiches leave a lot to be desired. Often they comprise two thin slices of bread, some butter, and a thin slice of meat. Things are getting better, for example, the Pret a Manger chain offers an interesting and more substantial selection.

Best Way To Get Around:

I'm a firm believer in public transportation, and London has a great subway and bus system. It has always gotten me where I wanted to go, even at night. However, if you're going to an unfamiliar area at night, you are well advised to take a taxi to avoid any worries about the neighborhood (or about getting lost). Taxis are plentiful, and the drivers have the reputation of being knowlegeable about every little street in London.

Located in a run-down looking warehouse district that seems to be picking up as clubs move in, Quality Chop House itself looks run down inside and out. The narrow, high backed wooden booths ae not terribly comfortable, and a large person might have trouble squeezing in beside the table. However, any resemblance to a dive ends here. The chef obviously knows what he's doing with meat and fish, simply prepared. My husband had a very good French-style fish soup with rouille, followed by nicely cooked lamb rib chops with mashed potatoes. I started with fresh sardines with tomato salad. The tomatoes were surprisingly flavorful, and there were plenty of sardines in a sweet vinegary dressing. I had calves liver and bacon served with flaccid chips (fries). The liver was done to a perfect pink. For dessert we shared a comforting, creamy rice pudding. This is a good place for traditional English cooking, plus some modern twists, all done well.

The closest tube stop is Farringdon, on the Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and Circle lines.

We had read some excellent reviews of this little restaurant and thought we'd give it a try. It was very unusual food, with odd and exotic flavoring, but expensive (more than $100 for two, not including wine). It is Malay cuisine, with its pan-Asian influence. Unlike many Asian restaurants, the service is traditional, one-plate-one-person, not family style shared dishes. My husband started out with a hot squid appetizer, which he liked, then had a Kingfish in unusual spices. It was a lot like a halibut. He ended with a rice flour "truffle" filled with coconut, a little fried ball of pastry. I started with an unusual dish of finely shredded chicken and coconut, which was placed on kaffir lime leaves. You roll the filling in the leaf and eat it. I also had coconut milk curry with giant prawns. The prawns were fresh and sweet. The food is not at all hot-spicy. It was an interesting experience, but the food wasn't good enough to return on another trip. One warning, they burn a lot of incense in this small restaurant; our jackets reeked for days after, and I could hardly wait to wash my hair, lest my pillow get infused with the heavy odor.

This is a small restaurant, and it fills up, so reservations are a must.

Vietnamese pho (noodle soup) can be as comforting as chicken soup. The menu here, as in all other pho restaurants, offers a wide variety of meat combinations in the pho. It is served with fresh bean sprouts, a slice of lemon, and some sawtooth. Usually fresh basil leaves also accompany it, but not here. You add the fresh items as you eat, to flavor the broth as you wish. If you have a cold, nothing beats a healthy dose of hot pepper sauce in the pho to clear up the stuffies. Unfortunately, there was none offered here, nor was there any hoisin sauce, which is also usually on the table. Maybe U.S. Vietnamese restaurants are just different.

A mom and a son run the restaurant, and speak a little English. The son is studying English, and knows the basics for taking orders, but don't get too exotic with questions. The restaurant is a small storefront, with little adornment.

I had the pho with chicken -- a change for me because I've usually seen it with varieties of beef. The broth was chicken-y but blander than I've had elsewhere. My husband had the sliced beef, also pretty bland. It was an interesting experience to see how a familiar dish "translates" into another country's cuisine, but I would not go out of my way to eat here. It is in the heard of Camden Town, so if you're visiting Camden Lock market, it's convenient. It is mid-way between the Camden Town and Chalk Farm tube stops on the Northern line (toward Edgeware Rd.)

This elegant little restaurant is more upscale than most Thai restaurants, and more expensive as well. However, it was one of the best meals we had in London, and we'd go back again.

We started with green mango salad with shredded chicken, and shrimp in a mildly spicy dressing. We always order pad Thai (Thai noodles), using it as the "gold standard" to compare restaurants. It was a little gooey and more sweet than we like, but it was served with humungous butterflied prawns, which set it apart from most. We also tried the prik khing (green bean curry), another Thai stand-by. It was unique -- it had what seemed like deep fried English bacon in it, which was coated with a mildly spicy barbecue sauce. Strange, but good. We just had to try the wild boar with water spinach in a coconut milk curry. It disappointed only because it just tasted like ordinary domestic pork, but the curry was good. I ordered lemongrass tea, refreshing and gingery, a perfect foil for the food. The food was nowhere near as spicy as other Thai food, I've had. Even the dishes the server warned us were hot were not.

There is another branch of the restaurant at 9 Beauchamp Pl., London SW3, phone 0171 581 8820. (There are also branches in Geneva and Singapore.)

We’ve always heard that London has wonderful Indian food. I am not fond of Indian food, and my husband hasn’t had much experience with it, so we decided that the well-known lunch buffet at Bombay Brasserie would be a good introduction to what London had to offer. The dining room where the buffet is situated is stunning. It is like a garden conservatory, with glass ceiling and plants everywhere. It is quite the tropical setting. Service is classy, especially considering this is an all-you-can-eat buffet. The waiter placed our napkins on our laps, and ice water was poured from silver pitchers. The table had a little advertising tent on it that touted the fact that this is Tom Cruise’s favorite Indian restaurant; apparently he has had food flown to his movie locations from the restaurant.

A waiter stood at the end of the buffet table that held the soup and appetizers and served people. The rest of the buffet was self-service. The buffet offered a chicken appetizer and a tofu appetizer. There was a roast chicken dish, a fish curry in a red sauce, cabbage and potatoes that had been cooked a long time, ground beef in sauce (which was the best of the lot), and an assortment of salads. The cooked foods were all pretty similar in taste. There was a small jar of mango chutney on the table, but no other chutneys or raitas or other condiments on the buffet. Nothing was very spicy. Desserts were a strange pineapple cornmeal cake and a rice and tapioca pudding that was good, but reminiscent of baby food.

I had really hoped for more variety and more interesting food. If you like Indian food, I am sure there must be better restaurants for it. If you don’t know Indian food, I don’t believe this will give you an accurate introduction. About the only thing it has going for it is a restful place to have lunch, and that’s not enough to rate a return visit. Lunch for two, was about $60, too expensive for what it was.

Bombay Brasserie is directly opposite the Glouster Road tube stop (District, Circle and Picadilly lines) and a 10 minute walk from Knightsbridge.

Mr. Kong is one of the more well-known restaurants in Chinatown. It is a cramped place, with two floors of small dining rooms. We were seated in a corner in the basement dining room. Unfortunately, a large party near us was smoking heavily, and the ventilation system couldn't handle it. Fortunately, they finished their dinner and left before we were served.

The food was mostly pretty good, with a few clinkers. We ordered a lot because there were many tempting descriptions on the menu. (We were staying in an apartment, so the left-overs came with us and, with a few additions, made a good dinner the next night.) Steamed chicken in dark soy was salty, without another flavor dimension. Oysters stewed with ginger, green onion and oyster sauce were plump, large and tasty. Stuffed eggplant with black bean sauce was very good. The fried squid was too greasy. Service was impersonal. One goes to such restaurants for the food, not the service or ambiance. If you go, try to be seated upstairs, as it is lighter and airier.

Mr. Kong's is in Chinatown, in the theater district. Leicester Square tube stop (Picadilly and Northern lines) is the closest.

On Friday afternoon and Saturday, the Borough Market is open the the public. It is located under the railway, and is one of London's oldest and largest. The design is Victorian.

We were staying in an apartment with a fully-equipped kitchen, so we made good use of the market, buying organic lamb chops, the thinnest asparagus I'd ever seen (smaller than a pencil), and tiny yellow potatoes to make for dinner. But even if you don't have the use of a kitchen, you can still enjoy the fresh baked goods, fruits and vegetables, and prepared meats, such as pate and dry sausages. Besides, it is always fun to look at unfamiliar produce, fish and meat.

Just outside the market's roof is Neal's Yard Dairy. You will probably smell it before you see it. It's the place to get a sample of some wonderful English cheeses, hard and soft. (And they'll gfive you a little bit to taste, if you ask.) We bought a piece of something called Stinky Bishop, and it really lived up to its name. They also have delicious bread from Poilane, one of Paris' best bakeries.

The stalls vary and move around within the market from day to day. We went on a Saturday the first time, and were disappointed that some of the sellers were not there the following Friday (an exotic sausage maker, in particular). So if you see something you want, buy it, because it mught not be there the next time.

Tube stop: London Bridge, on the Northern line (toward Kennington). Hours: Friday noon to 6 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.