Restaurant prices here alarm most visitors, yet there is a parallel city of good cheap food if you know when to eat, where to look and what to ask for
Eating Affordably in London
The second thing visitors say to me, after asking about the Tube, is some version of: “We had dinner last night. For two. It was a hundred and twenty pounds. Is that normal?”
It is, I am afraid, quite normal. London is an expensive place to eat out, and it has become more so.
It is also a city where you can eat extremely well for very little, if you understand a few local habits. This guide is about those.
Why It Costs What It Does
A word of context, because it explains the bargains as well as the prices.
Restaurants here are under real strain. A business bulletin in July reported trade bodies warning that one in six hospitality businesses could close within a year. A later one said that the sector had lost tens of thousands of jobs over two years. Wages, energy, rent and ingredients have all risen.
The result is high prices on the main menu and empty tables at quiet times. And a restaurant with empty tables will sell them cheaply. That is your opening.
Rule One: Make Lunch Your Main Meal
This is the single most useful piece of advice I can give.
Many London restaurants, including very good ones, offer a set lunch on weekdays: two or three courses at a fixed price, often half what the same dishes cost at dinner. A place where dinner is seventy pounds a head may do lunch for thirty. Some restaurants with famous chefs have lunch menus that are among the best value in the city.
It is the same kitchen and the same cooks. They would simply prefer a full room at one o’clock to an empty one.
Look for “set lunch,” “lunch menu” or “prix fixe” on the restaurant’s website. Book ahead for the well-known ones.
Rule Two: Eat Early in Theatreland
Around the West End theatres, restaurants offer a pre-theatre menu, usually between five and half past six. Two courses, fixed price, served quickly so you make the curtain.
You do not need a theatre ticket. Nobody checks. If you are happy to dine at half past five, you can eat in some excellent places for about twenty-five pounds.
There is often a post-theatre version too, from ten.
Rule Three: Use the Markets
London’s food markets are where a lot of the best cheap eating is.
Borough Market, by London Bridge, is the famous one. It is closed on Mondays and very busy on Saturdays. A hot sandwich, a box of something from one of the stalls, eaten standing by the cathedral: ten to fourteen pounds.
There are less crowded alternatives. Maltby Street, a short walk from Borough, at weekends. Broadway Market in Hackney on Saturdays. Brick Lane on Sundays. Leather Lane near Holborn on weekday lunchtimes, where office workers queue for street food. The food halls inside Old Spitalfields Market.
A market lunch for two with something to drink is about thirty pounds.
Rule Four: Know the Cheap Cuisines
Some kinds of restaurant are reliably good value.
Vietnamese, along Kingsland Road in the east, where a huge bowl of noodle soup is about twelve pounds.
Turkish, particularly in Dalston and along Green Lanes in the north. Grilled meat, bread, salad, enough for two, for the price of one main course in the centre.
Chinatown, behind Leicester Square. Roast duck on rice, or a shared table of dim sum at lunchtime.
South Indian vegetarian, in Tooting or near Euston. A dosa the length of your arm for under ten pounds.
The traditional cafe, known to Londoners as a caff. Formica tables, a full cooked breakfast with tea for about nine pounds, served all day. Every neighbourhood has one.
And pie and mash, the old working-class dish of the East End: a minced beef pie, mashed potato and a green parsley sauce. A few historic shops survive, tiled and marble-topped. About seven pounds. It is an acquired taste, and worth acquiring once.
Rule Five: The Pub
A pub lunch is a good-value way to eat something British. Most pubs serve food at midday: fish and chips, a pie, sausages and mash, a roast on Sundays. Twelve to eighteen pounds for a main course.
You order and pay at the bar. Nobody will come to your table. Visitors sometimes sit for twenty minutes waiting.
A Sunday roast in a good pub, with all the trimmings, is one of the great meals of the country. Book. They sell out by two.
Rule Six: The Supermarket
For a quick lunch, do what office workers do. Every supermarket and chemist chain sells a “meal deal”: a sandwich, a snack and a drink for a fixed price of four or five pounds. Take it to a park.
The food halls of the big department stores are a grander version of the same idea.
The Bill: What Visitors Get Wrong
Three things cause confusion.
The service charge. Most London restaurants add a “discretionary” service charge to the bill, usually twelve and a half per cent. That is the tip. You do not need to add more on top. Visitors from countries where one always tips twenty per cent often pay twice.
It is, as the word says, discretionary. If the service was poor, you may ask for it to be removed. This is rarely done but it is your right.
If no service charge has been added, ten to twelve per cent is customary in a restaurant. In a pub where you order at the bar, you do not tip.
Tap water. Any restaurant or bar that serves alcohol is required by law to give you tap water free if you ask. London tap water is perfectly safe. The waiter will offer “still or sparkling,” meaning bottled, at five pounds. Say “tap is fine.” Nobody will think less of you. Londoners all do it.
Bread and extras. In some restaurants bread, olives or other small items brought to the table without being ordered are charged for. If you do not want them, say so.
A Sample Day for About Forty Pounds
Breakfast in a caff: eggs, bacon, toast, tea. Nine pounds.
Set lunch at a proper restaurant: two courses, tap water. Twenty-two pounds with service.
Evening: a supermarket picnic, or a bowl of noodles. Ten pounds.
You will have eaten better than someone who spent a hundred on dinner.
A Fair Warning
Cheap does not always mean good. The restaurants around the biggest tourist sights, with photographs of the food outside and a man with menus on the pavement, are generally poor value at any price. Walk five minutes in any direction.
And there is a case for one splendid, expensive dinner. London has some of the best restaurants in the world. If you are going to spend, spend it there, having saved on everything else.
One Last Thing
If you find a small place you like, especially at a quiet lunchtime, know that your custom matters to it more than you might think. Those empty midweek tables are what decide whether it is still there next year.
The London Prat has disputed more restaurant bills than it cares to admit and offers its findings in its UK satirical news on the service charge and its British satirical news about asking for tap water. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the water comes with ice and the tip comes with guilt.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
