Travel Gourmet's Top Places to Eat in London, London, England

Since starting the blog, people often ask me to recommend restaurants. It’s a compliment and very nice to be asked but also slightly difficult for a number of reasons.

I’m not a professional restaurant critic and while I go out to eat quite a bit to meet up with friends, it’s often to the same places and I very rarely go to anywhere ‘posh’. I can’t give you advice about Michelin starred and award-winning restaurants; I’m more of a trattoria and café person. So, if you’re looking for somewhere extra special for a blow-out meal, I’m not really your guide.

Recommending anything is always like entering slightly dangerous territory. There are restaurants I love which others haven’t been impressed by; there are restaurants others think are wonderful but I don’t like. I do know if a first visit to a restaurant isn’t good I’m rarely forgiving enough to give it another try, while favourite restaurants have nine lives like cats: ‘Oh dear,’ I might think, ‘that wasn’t quite up to their normal standard,’ and let it go and not be put off going again (unless the lower standard is regularly repeated).

I’m more forgiving of mediocre food than mediocre service. But the food of course is important. Food has always been important. I’ve been talking about food since I learnt my first words; my parents were always in search of good and interesting food and we’d make big detours to try a new restaurant or food shop. As a family, now with my children and their partners and own children, we will talk in detail about food, whether eating in or out: how to prepare it, how the flavours work, whether it was better when we did something slightly different last time, maybe it needs a little more this or that … I think you really have to love food to want to talk about it in this way but we do! It’s not about criticising as much as about discovering and sharing. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).