Dining in London
Cookbook Cafe
The Cookbook Cafe, in the luxurious InterContinental London Park Lane hotel, is something different - an interactive restaurant where customers are encouraged to share their own culinary expertise and recipes, help create menus, sample dishes and attend chef workshops. There's a range of short menus under headings like Travel (where you might find a starter of ceviche of blue fin tuna with tempura prawn, lime and chilli dressing) and Tradition (with mains like fillet of beef with braised beef ravioli, parsnip purée, wild mushrooms and Madeira sauce). Gorgeous desserts might include warm bread and butter pudding with apricot compote and vanilla cream sauce.
Bolton’s
Bolton’s has been getting it right for appreciative City lunchtime diners for fifteen years, and devotees pray they will continue indefinitely. The food is classic Italian of a very high order. Until you’ve tasted the tagliatelle with lobster or the fillets of sea bass with clams and shrimp, you simply haven’t lived. Broadly international wine list. Service both friendly and discreet. A place to impress, or simply to enjoy.
Cantina Vinopolis
Cantina Vinopolis restaurant in London by the Thames under the huge Victorian railway arches at Bankside is the public restaurant of the Vinopolis wine museum. You know you'll find a blistering selection of interesting wines, but you should also know you'll be enjoying terrific modern European cuisine with more than a nod to the flavours of the Mediterranean. There's no signature dish, just a serious focus on freshly prepared steaks, chicken, fish and salads with flavourful, simple side dishes. The smart casual restaurant makes the most of its setting with light wood tables, open kitchen, and easy contemporary décor under the soaring arches. Cantina Vinopolis spreads the love of wine at regular wine tastings and dinners.
Caravaggio
Caravaggio is a firm favorite with City boys, not least for the extremely attractive waitresses. The restaurant is well liked by the ’locals’, who enjoy the relaxed atmosphere and friendly yet efficient service of the management. Most of the menu is also available to be eaten at the bar, if you’re in a hurry to rush back to that all-important squillion-making deal. But if you want to linger, you can sit at your table with brandies and cigars all afternoon if you wish. What’s cooking? Sliced veal topped with fresh spinach and buffalo mozzarella, risotto with sea scallops and asparagus roast suckling pig served with sweet potato and fennel.
Cicada
A trendy bar-restaurant in the self-consciously fashionable Clerkenwell, Cicada's mix of strong design, fun, and inexpensive food continues to attract a regular media industry crowd. There's a large, airy bar for the boozers, and top notch Pan Asian goodies served from an open plan kitchen for the peckish. Miso soup, delicate dim sum, tempura, sashimi and curries are all here, as well as some scrumptious barbeque specials. The wine list is extensive, though cocktails (from £6) are the drink of choice. When things heat up, head downstairs to the bijou club room. Or, on summer evenings, be seen sitting outside with a Bangkok bellini or three. Cicada has it all.
Delfina
Delfina is a unique establishment situated on Bermondsey Street. It is open as restaurant lunchtimes only, and Friday nights, serving stylish inventive eclectic cuisine that changes fortnightly, the menu is created by the Head Chef Richard Simpson. The trendy ware-house-like restaurant is also and event space in the evenings and is used for private and corporate events, product launches, exhibitions and live events. The lively lunch crowd is as eclectic as the food, part City suits, part local fashionistas.
Esca
Newish restaurant and bar catering to the City crowd, in the Chartered Accountants’ Hall. Esca has a wine bar for light meals and the lovely main restaurant. The interior is stylish, light and modern with plenty of space between tables and the service is consistently good. Excellent private dining facilities for between 2 - 400 guests make this an ideal location for functions. What’s cooking? Terrine of red mullet and monkfish with saffron dressing. Smoked haddock topped with Welsh rarebit on a beef, tomato and basil salad. Esca fishcake with creamed spinach and nuntua sauce. Braised lamb shank with vegetables and gratin dauphinois potatoes. Sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce.
Gaucho - City
The City branch of Gaucho Restaurant serves up some of the best steaks in London to bankers and money boys hungry for red meat. A million miles away from the steak houses of the 70's, Gaucho provides a much more stylish take with real cow hide seats and dark wood. You almost expect tanned latino Polo players to be propping up the bar.
Kwan Thai
Wonderful waterfront views of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London make Kwan Thai a romantic spot in the evenings and in the summer you can sit outside with a cocktail watching the sun set over the city. Modern and stylish it attracts the business lunch crowd who fancy a spot of Oriental dining. What’s cooking? Green chicken curry, charcoal grilled king prawns, Kwan Thai platter including chicken satay spring rolls, fried gold bag and vegetables in a pastry cup.