Pho

3 Great Titchfield Street
W1W 8AX

020 7436 0111

The Vietnamese food may be better on Kingsland Road but this small chain (Clerkenwell, this one close to Oxford Circus and the Westfield shopping centre) delivers good value and (for me) more convenient locations. For less than £15 per head you can have a filling meal. There is not too much choice here (often a good sign!) the focus of course being on the pho noodle soups. I had spicy prawn for £8.45, and a fresh carrot apple and ginger fruit juice for £2.95.

The pho soup with good flat rice noodles had a rather less flavour filled than I remember from previous visits, slightly watery, but chili hot stock. There was a generous number of prawns. On the side there are fresh beansprouts, coriander, red chili, mint and lime to add. Adding all the chili it really is quite spicy hot which I like. The fruit juices are zingy tasty fresh. The place was full upstairs by 1pm (there is a basement too) and is clearly doing well. There is quite loud piped music but this is no booking fast food. The service is casual, friendly but efficient.

Christopher's

18 Wellington Street
London WC2E 7DD

020 7240 4222

I haven't been to the restaurant of Christopher's 'the American bar and grill' as it calls itself for a long time. It used to be rather fashionable though never a 'foodie' place. I like the bar. They make good martinis and its a place to meet in crowded Covent garden. It was freezing cold and we'd just been to a film and presentation at the LSE on the other side of the Aldwych. We decided to stop at Christopher's walking from the Aldwych down the Strand. Sad. Its completely lost the plot. Its a lovely building with great views down past the Lyceum theatre and across Waterloo bridge and beautiful staircase leading from the ground floor up to the restaurant. The menu offers lots of seafood, steak, lobster; its an American grill. We just had one course: breast of barberry duck, roast citrus fennel, black olive tapenade £16.75. L.O. quite liked it. I thought the duck sauce was too sweet, gelatinous with little pools of oil and small canned bits of grapefruit. The fennel was overcooked. It was also cold. But I'm not so charitable. To be fair the duck itself was tender and not overcooked. The problem was everything that went with it. We had a sharp not great bottle of Argentine Piropo Malbec for £19.75. The total bill including 'discretionary' service was £64.69. The restaurant was almost empty or at any rate less than a third full mid week in the evening. Two couples had been put next door to each other in a row of tables for two against the back wall presumably to create an impression of greater business than if they had been placed far apart. I won't go back; or only to the bar.

Havelock Tavern

57 Masbro Road
London W14 0LS

020 7603 5374

Just west of the railway tracks that come into Kensington Olympia in rather undiscovered territory but quite close to the fashionable Brook Green is the Havelock Tavern. This in my view is one of the best 'restaurants' (its a gastro pub and you pay up front at the bar before you sit down) in nearly Kensington and much better than Cibo, Kitchen W8 and other restaurants I have reviewed on the other side of the tracks. In my Kensington league only Abingdon and L-Restaurant and Bar can compete on food of the restaurants I have reviewed so far. Both are more expensive and have a more formal restaurant style. Foodie bloggers (there are surprisingly to date no blog reviews on London Urban Spoon) you should check this place out!

I have braised octopus, chorizo, tomato & fennel stew with gremolada £14. It is herby ,spicy, garlicky, the octopus not chewy tough; lovely stock and strong flavours. There is the lemon zest of the gremolada and a strong fishy stock. It is not quite in the same class as the Brompton fish stew at Brompton Bar & Grill nor as copious; it is very different with one fish variety (the octopus). It is very good all the same. I try L.O.'s (this is what I plan to call my partner, see link to Loved One for explanation) slow roast belly of pork with bramley apple sauce, £15. She has already pronounced it succulent delicious, the crackling a shade flabby. I agree; it is excellent if not quite in the same league as that at Fino but we are making olympic comparisons here! You get very good thrown in bread and butter, and real pepper grinders without asking.


The Havelock at Sunday lunch is a very family affair. There are babies and labradors. It is a bit startlingly public school, white apartheid in the Fulham, Battersea mode (gastro pubs in these areas strictly for these immigrants however long they have been there), unlevened by the more cosmo and older mix of Notting Hill and even Kensington & Chelsea. We have a very good one course meal for two with a couple of pints of Cornish bitter (Doom Bar) for £36. A fault is the overhead blower heaters particularly close to the door. The seats nearby are empty when we arrive no doubt for this reason but the whole place is full by the time we leave. No booking so if you do go for Sunday lunch turn up before 1pm to get a choice of tables.

Hix

66-70 Brewer Street
London W1F 9TR

020 7292 3518

"Nice of them to provide a cloth to dry the dishes when we can't pay the bill" said my Scottish friend seeing the HIX napkin neatly folded on our place setting (see photo). This restaurant is all very in your face, happening , of the moment. We are sitting "at the bar" on comfortable stools with backs early on Thursday evening. The place is already jumping, more than three quarters full, and it is only 7pm. We are sitting just under a Damien Hirst mobile of mini fish in formaldehyde. Its impossible not to feel very me too in this uber cool environment. You really haven't discovered anything. It is also impossible not to feel shades of deja vue because this place has lots of form. The design team did The Wolseley, the Ivy (the facade has similar leaded windows) etc. Mark Hix of Hix's Oyster and Chop House is ex Le Caprice and Ivy. Kevin Gratton the head chef is ex Le Caprice and Scotts. I find myself wondering who all these people are, the punters in the restaurant, who are organised enough to book this particular slice of chic London. If you go to the website and try to secure a booking you are offered times like 5.30pm or 10.30pm ten days out, all more convenient times scored through in light gray.

Lets start at the beginning. We meet first in Mark's bar in the basement. It too has a long deep zinc bar with rolled edge. There are sofas and rugs and low lighting in hip modern style. There are just two empty places to sit left at the bar and it is only 6pm. The barman is mixing cocktails with showtime panache. The hugely long drinks list offers Mark's Libations using fresh british ingredients. I feel I better have one of these and order a 'Spitfires over Kent'. It is composed of homemade Beefeater sloe gin and fresh lemon juice and maraschino liqueur and creme de violette. It comes in a small glass and looks like the left over dregs of over stewed tea or as my Scottish friend puts it "what's left in the bottle of sherry your grandmother offers you". It actually tastes slightly bitter, strange and delicious.

Mark Hix is renowned for British food, fresh local ingredients, seasonal. The main courses are heavy with hunks of fish and meat: john dory, pollock, deer pie, woodcock, partridge, steak. Potted shrimps, prawn cocktail and smoked salmon feature amongst the starters. Nothing textbook Michelin about this. Solid simple school of Caprice, Ivy etc. but there are stranger combinations. I have wild rabbit offal with jerusalem artichokes and rosemary £7.00 as a starter. The jerusalem artichokes are pureed , the offal sitting above in a thick gravy. It is rich gamey delicious. After I have roast woodcock and celeriac mash with a side order of steamed spinach. It is simple but excellent, the meat juicy tender which is difficult to achieve in a restaurant. It is however not cheap at £24.00; most of the mains are £18 and up. Well you are paying for all this uber chic. Rather inappropriately for such a gamey, fishy place my Scottish friend is vegetarian but impressively Hix provides a separate vegetarian menu. She pronounces her main course dominated by a "buttery lump of potato", but her mixed beet salad has beautifully fresh ingredients. Not the most imaginative vegetarian cooking she thinks, but its really not what you go to Hix for. We have a half litre of Argentine Pulenta Estate Malbec which compliments my gamey meal perfectly. The service has been immaculately friendly and professional throughout or as my Scottish friend put it "amazingly not up your own arse for an expensive place".

You are paying quite a bit here for the theatre and stage set. The dining room has the high ceilings of a traditional Paris brasserie. The artworks by Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas etc lend it modern London edge. The sound pings around a bit but it buzzes with drama, energy. The food is very good in that hearty good fare not too mucked about Caprice, Ivy, Wolseley way. The ingredients are very fresh and good. I don't however think that Hix is so far from his origins in the aforementioned camp to be doing anything radically different, but everything I had is as good and the rabbit offal rather better than anything I've had in those establishments. If you want to take visitors to London somewhere to show off both hip London and that 'British food' really can be quite good you can't do much better than here.

The Only Running Footman

5 Charles St
W1J 5DE

020 7499 2988

I really like this place, and not just for its funny name. I like it but more for breakfast downstairs in the pub than the 'fine dining ' upstairs in a separate dining room which I didn't find exceptional. Its a pub which is open all day. In my experience you can always get in for breakfast without booking. Its a great place for meetings. Today only one other table was occupied when we arrived at 8.30am. By the time we left at 10.30am we were the only people there. The service is friendly and you can talk undisturbed. Although there is a formal menu (see below) you can ask for exactly what you want. I had a poached egg on brown toast with bacon. Nothing incredible but the poached egg runny, the bacon good quality and crispy and not fatty, flabby. Its mainly just that it works well to have a breakfast meeting in an uncrowded pub rather than in a too noisy pret a manger or a more formal environment; and in Mayfair there are'nt too many alternatives between pret and the very formal and expensive.

Breakfast
Monday to Friday 7.30am-10.30am
Weekends from 9.30am-12noon
Eggs Benedict £7.50
Full Farmhouse Breakfast £8.50
Loch Fyne smoked Salmon & scrambled egg £10.50
Bacon butty or Sausage sarnie with brown sauce £3.45
Croissant & Pain au Chocolat £2.95

Muckrakers and Foodrakers

Somebody asked me why I called this blog Foodraker so I said I would explain here in a blog post! Muckrakers were progressive US journalists of the early twentieth century noted for exposing corruption in business and politics. Hence Foodraker is dedicated among other things to exposing pretentious overpriced restaurants! Theodore Roosevelt used the term first in a speech in 1906. He referred to the use of the term in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and was believed to have been alluding to the titles of William Randolph Hearst's publishing empire (see Wikipedia entry here).

Sakura

9 Hanover Street,
London W1S 1YF

020 7629 2961

Return visit to Sakura. Miso udon soup with vegetables and chicken for two. £6.50 each. It was enormous with lots of spring onions, vegetables, chicken in delcious stock. Lunch for two with green tea for £13.00. No automatic 'discretionary' tip. Excellent and unbeatable value. See here for full review of Sakura.