Chigwell, International Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: Open in November 2021 (first announced in 2019) – this latest branch of the excellent Elephant & Castle-based Italian food operation comes complete with a sustainable timber frame and rooftop urban farm. A transformation of Redbridge Town Hall car park, it’s a collaboration with the local council and the Mayor of London as part of Ilford’s new cultural quarter.

2021 Review: “In the heart of Walthamstow Village”, this “great neighbourhood spot” – a Spar supermarket with kitchen attached – wins praise for its “quality” cooking (“the 2019 Harden’s description of pub-type grub underplays its standard and originality”). “Very relaxed and welcoming for young children”, the venture’s best-known innovation is bacon jam, which you can buy by the jar in various flavours. Other branches have opened in Hackney and, most recently, Hammersmith (somewhat better-served areas, so these respective branches are somewhat less of a local lifeline).

“Favourite restaurant of all time!” – “Stunning flavours and textures, offered by the fixed-price, no-choice, but ever-changing taster menu” inspire adulation for Adolfo de Cecco’s “unpretentious” shop-conversion in Dalston. It may be one of East London’s true culinary heavyweights, but the style is “totally informal and allows the food to be the star”. “Service is impeccable and the food is brought to your table by the chefs themselves”. And “how does he do it for the price?” – £122 for the eight courses plus wine pairing (a meal might run – roasted beetroot tart; bread and butter; monkfish with bergamot sauce; pig skin congee with XO sauce; Jerusalem artichoke with umeboshi sauce and tahini; cheese with onion ice cream; yuzu granita; dried mushroom and frozen tofu). One report in particular typifies the love the places generates: “we eat out in proper restaurants twice most weeks, so we don’t stint ourselves, and from the receipts can count a full 50 visits to Casa Fofó since the beginning of 2023, and we never seem to be offered the same dish twice!”

“It’s so cute!” – this hipster hotspot in Newington Green still carries the ‘Barnes Motors’ signage of its origins as a 1940s car showroom, with a large glass frontage (which opens in summer). It’s “a wonderful place to while away a sunny afternoon, and very pretty for a candlelit evening too”. Choose from the blackboard menu of numerous, well-realised small plates, plus wines, beers and other tipples.

“A little off the beaten track” at the far end of Islington, but “definitely a gem for this corner of London” – brothers Martin & Christoph Lange’s “cracking neighbourhood restaurant” is “consistently good” (“I’ve never had a bad dish”). There’s a fixed-price multi-choice menu to ensure “reasonable” bills.

2022 Review: Charlie Mellor’s (ex-Brawn and Elliot’s) cute Hackney wine bar and merchant provides a high- quality fixed-price modern European menu, accompanied by artisan wines from small producers. There’s also ‘The Cave’, for evening DJ sets, behind the off licence.

“Perfect for cheese lovers”: the “quirky and atmospheric” cafés adjoining these excellent retail cheese emporia – particularly the well-known branch in Marylebone – are particularly “good for lunch”, offering cheese and charcuterie boards alongside simple dishes like pan-seared salmon or paté en croute. Top Tip – worth remembering for breakfast.

2022 Review: A ‘botanical, waterside Garden of Eden’ – according to the Canary Wharf PR team – this foliage-filled street food market (with siblings including Pergola Padington, The Prince Earl’s Court and Lost in Brixton) opened on the Crossrail Place roof garden in May 2021 (on a site that was formerly E14’s Giant Robot). A roster of street-food stars inhabit a space that’s a little slicker than its siblings, but there’s also an in-house food offering and three bars.

2022 Review: It’s a bit less nook-like than it looks, if you head to the larger basement of this summer 2020 Highbury newcomer: a deli by day and neighbourhood café in the evenings. With a vague connection to Linden Stores (RIP), which it replaced in 2020, there’s a Turkish twist to the contemporary European small dishes and sharing plates. Limited early feedback, but very positive all-round.

2023 Review: With an all-day menu that bounces happily from the Caribbean and Mexico to the Isle of Man and Thailand, Juliette Banner has provided up-beat service in Crouch End for more than 30 years. “A Banners breakfast is the perfect cure for a hangover” – and you can also earn one with the “great cocktails”. The “authentic American-style burgers” must have attracted Bob Dylan, the bard of Americana, whose 1993 visit is commemorated with a plaque – you can even book the table he sat at!

2021 Review: “A very small, friendly local” in the centre of Muswell Hill for over two years now; mostly it serves “delicious”, light brunch-friendly fare from breakfast onwards (“lovely healthy salad options”), but there’s a more substantial menu of simple, modern bistro dishes by night.

This spectacular tavern, which opened in Queen Victoria’s coronation year next to Greenwich’s Royal Naval College, has “a great setting beside the Thames” complete with a historic interior, and is not surprisingly “a favourite with tourists”. It can provide a good trip, but it can also “be let down by its typical pub grub”.

2021 Review: ‘Gluten free but you wouldn’t know it!’ is the motto at this modern bistro “very handy for the Sadlers Wells theatre”: “a charming and slightly eclectic restaurant with enthusiastic staff” and “a varied menu to suit all tastes”. “My gluten-free friend was delighted to find he could eat anything on the menu, and happily tucked into pie and mash, saying that you wouldn’t know it was gluten-free (a point echoed by the non-gluten-free among us)”.

“Recovering nicely from the Covid effect” – this “perennial favourite for lunch” near Tower Hill is a classic bolt hole for professional buddies conspiring to kill off an afternoon over a decent bottle. Run by an independent wine merchant in a superbly characterful Victorian cellar, it provides “basic platters” of cheese or charcuterie (with veggie/vegan options) to help absorb the “very good wine at accessible prices, with good advice from the owner”. A flat £12 corkage fee makes it a good place to explore more expensive vintages, and it hosts regular events – “did a Chinese wine tasting... who knew?”

2021 Review: “Sensational Asian-fusion cooking, with the freshest of ingredients” creates an “exciting” culinary experience at this small waterside café, in St Katharine Docks. “The team is friendly and you can chat to the chef – who is a real artist – as he works in the open plan kitchen area, adjacent to your table”.

“Every year I struggle to come up with new ways of saying just how wonderful this extremely underrated spot is”, say fans of this cherished local – a bright spark in the culinary void near Surrey Quays station. “They’ve been in situ for ages (thank goodness) yet the menu is always changing and continues to impress”: “sourdough pizzas are the main event – the pear and gorgonzola and the tiger prawn with chorizo are particular favourites – and it also has a modern European and grill menu”.

“The energy is fab” at this “busy and buzzy” Mayfair haunt, whose large central bar, pavement tables and green leather stools import a sense of chic Italian glamour to this corner-site a minute from Bond Street. The Italian food (cicchetti, risotti, pastas, traditional mains) doesn’t detract from the occasion, but is “highly priced for average quality”, albeit “all decent”; and “service can suffer when it’s over-busy”. Nowadays part of Soho House, its branches spread from Berlin to West Hollywood, via the City of London (in The Ned). Comments on the latter aren’t terrible, but less enthusiastic than those for W1.

2021 Review: “Ranks with the best beef I’ve ever had in London” is typical of the high praise earned by this smart three-year-old. “Mind you, it is right next to Smithfield” – a fact reflected in its straight-to-the-point menu – “and the maître d’ knows just the right wine to wash it down with”. It occupies an architectural gem of a townhouse once home to Sir John Betjeman.