Best Eats in London

London is fabulous. It really is. The shopping is great and, even more importantly, so is the food. In the four days we just spent there it was impossible to try all the places I had heard and read about since my last trip to London in 2007, but we did find five places that definitely deserve to be mentioned:

1. Spaccanapoli

2. The Grocer on Elgin

3. Ottolenghi

4. Princi

5. Coco Momo

1. Spaccanapoli

We passed this restaurant while searching for food on our first night, but I wasn't in the mood for Italian. Fortunately we decided to check it out on our second night and, man, was I glad we did! We had some of the best Italian food I had ever had (outside of Italy). 

We started out with an avocado mozzarella salad. The mozzarella was heavenly: creamy and smooth with a real mozzarella taste and not stringy or plastic-y (if you know what I mean). As a main course we had penne all'amatriciana and pizza rucola. Both were outstanding, especially the pizza: the dough was thin with a perfect balance between spongy and crusty, and the chunks of mozzarella were perfectly melted on top so that with each bite your teeth sunk into luscious layers of dough, tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, arugula and finally parmesan. After all the food (the pasta portion was huge!) I really didn't want any dessert, but the charming waiter (who surprised us with good German skills learned by dealing with endless, and probably annoying, numbers of German tourists back in Italy) convinced us to try their housemade tiramisu and we were not sorry. It was one of the best tiramisus I have ever had. 

Just a side note: a specialty of the house is pizza by the meter. It is served on a long wooden board set on top of a raised wooden contraption so that you can reach the pizza from all sides of a table. Quite nifty! 

Another side note: get a table upstairs, if you can, as the tables in the basement are really close together so that when your neighbor chokes on their food, you get scared that their spittle will land on your food (this really happened!). 

2. The Grocer on Elgin

On our second full day in London we decided to go to Notting Hill. I thought we could have breakfast at the Hummingbird Bakery, a well-known bakery I had visited two years ago. But the urge to try something new took over and after trying to decide between three possible places for breakfast, we finally landed at The Grocer on Elgin. This place sells ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat-then-eat foods as well as drinks, sandwiches and pastries. After taking what seemed like ages to decide on a pastry, I finally settled on a hazelnut brownie. Brownies featuring walnurs are common, but I had never had the hazelnut version, so I just had to try it. By the way, hazelnuts seem to be the rage in London right now as there were other places selling pastries with hazelnuts, such as hazelnut croissants at Patisserie Valerie. Hazelnuts and chocolate really go together well. Hazelnuts have quite a bit of flavor (compared to walnuts) so that you get an intense flavor experience when eating them with chocolate. As a drink I tried the raspberry lassi, which was good because it tasted like raspberries and wasn't too sweet. 

3. Ottolenghi

I had already heard of this place before coming to London as my sister had found their cookbook with delicious looking recipes at Orell Füssli's English bookshop in Zürich. Ottolenghi has four locations in London. Since we were already in Notting Hill on Day 2, we went to the Notting Hill location for lunch. From outside the cafe you can see towers of sweets in the window. Once you enter you encounter a salad buffet, each one looking better than the next. But you can also order some meat and fish dishes. We settled for plates of three salads each. Everything we had was great. You probably can't go wrong with any of the salads. For dessert we shared a strawberry cheesecake. The texture was great, but it was a little too salty for my taste. I should have tried something else!

Just a side note: I would check out the other Ottolenghi locations as the café in Notting Hill has only a tiny room for eating crammed with one big table that sits 10. In general I really like the idea of sitting at a big table, but the room was a little claustrophobic.  

4. Princi

Late on our last night in London we passed by Princi and saw the rows of delicious sweets, which made our mouths water. But we were too full after having had dinner and trying Chinese pastries from Kowloon Bakery in Chinatown. So, we decided to definitely go back to Princi for breakfast on our last day. And that is exactly what we did! It was really, really hard to decide what to get, but I finally settled for a chocolate cake with nuts and raisins (second photo on bottom left). Mmmmm. It was delish. 

Just a side note: the interior design of Princi is really cool. There are long tables to sit at (love the communal feeling) and the back wall has water fountains coming out of it. Even the bathrooms are nice and scented by burning incense. 

Another side note: after hearing my American English accent the Chinese woman behind the counter said "Don't people shoot each other over there?" while pointing imaginary guns in the air. The USA needs an image change...

 

5. Coco Momo

For lunch on our last day we really wanted Fish and Chips. We had heard about a place in Marylebone, but it turned out to be closed. We continued along Marylebone High Street and came across Coco Momo. There we had an Aberdeen Angus beef burger w cheddar cheese, tomato & onion relish, home cut chips and Warm, grilled goat's w roasted Mediterranean vegetables on triple corn bread. Both dishes were really fresh and tasty. I also highly recommend the berry cooler made with real berries, lemon juice and soda.

  

One street south of Coco Momo is La Fromagerie, where I had my last sweet in London-a delicious brownie. We were in such a hurry to get back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and head to the airport that I didn't have time to take a picture.