cheap food in london
 

Does anyone have any suggestions for cheap, but good places to eat in London. We are a family of four with two teens. We will be staying in Knightsbridge. We will be visiting Tower of London and historic London mainly. Any advise would be truly appreciated. We will be in London in July.

We stayed in the area of Knightsbridge about a year-and-a-half ago and was not able to find anything cheap that would be of good quality.

We got suckered in the basement food hall of Harrods and it was very expensive for mediocre food. We don't mind paying a lot for good food (i.e. good QPR), but Harrods and a tea and pastries establishment with Eastern European/Russian wait staff in front of it were the pits. Avoid this at all cost.

I'm sure somebody here will be able to recommend a suitable one for your needs.

A nice thing about London is the menu is posted outside the establishment so you can see the prices. Of course with the dollar what it is now be sure to factor that in. We ate a couple of Indian restaurants that were good and very reasonable, we at at pubs, and during the day you can pick up sandwhiches at various places, pizza, things like that. I'm sorry but I don't know the names of any of the places we ate. We just looked for a place when we got humgry and usually it was good. Only one place that I recall that the food was NOT very good. It's not hard to eat reasonably.

There is a Wagamama across from the Tower of London. It is fun and the food is good.

Hmmm...I must have been hungry to eat the whole restaurant. We at IN a couple of Indian restaurants. (:

I am leaving tomorrow for my 6th trip to London. As in my previous trips, so too in this one I will be on a rather tight budget (I live in Brazil and earn in "reais" - the exchange rate now is around 5.50 reais to a British pound). So, I usually eat at pubs (fish 'n chips, sausage and mash, etc), or at chain restaurants, mainly Italian, where you are more certain to eat a good meal at reasonable prices. Pan Pizza has specials where you pay a flat fee of 5.99 GBP and eat all the salad, pasta, and pizza you want. Another option is to go to Camden Market (fun in itself) and eat Asian and Indian food on the stands.

Brick Lane. There are lots of cheap Indian restaurants and it's only minutes from Tower Hill. Best Indian food in London.

Try Karim's (indian rest) in Basewater. The best. There are also a couple of good Greek restaurants on the same street.

Wagamama is wonderful. Great food with lots of choices for well under £10 per person (including a soft drink or water). There are several including one in Knightsbridge. That one is right around the corner from Harvey Nichols.

Pizza Express is pretty good; I would compare it to a Pasta Pomodoro kind of restaurant. You can find good pizza and pasta for less than 10 GBP. I think there might be one near Knightsbridge, but I am sure there is one at Russell Square / Holborn area. Like Wondering, I would also recommend Wagamamas.

I always recommend Hardens 'Cheap Eats in London'. Hardens is THE restaurant guide. you can get this edition on amazon or hardens.com

There are plenty of reasonably priced restaurants in London's China town.

It's something of a myth that it's difficult to find somewhere decent and cheap in London. I'd suggest finding a good local cafe, and by this I mean a greasy spoon, and have a full English breakfast each day. This will keep you going all morning and it really doesn't have to be that unhealthy.

Then later in the day, perhaps around 2pm (once a lot of office workers have had their lunch so it'll be quieter), find a restaurant/bar that has special lunch offers. I work in Soho, for example, and there are loads of bars and restaurants that do lunches of 2 courses for around £6. Make that your main meal and then you can have a lighter meal in the evening.

Any area with a lot of offices will have places such as this. As an example, near my office there is:

Digress - a bar offering main courses for between £3 and £5

Red Bar - 2 courses for £5.90 (though limited menu)

Masala Zone - fantastic Indian where you can get a thali (lots of little dishes and very filling) for about £6

Bistro 1 - 2 courses for £6.90

Sugar Reef - starters £2 and main courses £5

This is just the tip of the iceberg. And also look out for pre-theatre deals at some very nice restaurants...

captbuzz:
Belgo Central in Covent Garden has a "beat the clock" special. In other words, at 6:00 PM you get a main course and free drink for 6 GBP. My favorite is their mussels chips and beer. Check it out at www.belgo-restaurants.com. My other favorite is a two-fer special at one of the Wagamama restaurants. Go to www.wagamama.com for information on this weeks specials.

Another thing to look out for are pre-theatre menus - ie that are before 7.30. They are quite a bit cheaper than their full price equivalents.

How about those Pret-a-Manger places? I have seen them recommended and was planning to try on my next visit.

Pret a manger is a chain of sandwich shops - they sell sandwiches and similar things as well as soft drinks etc.

It's the sort of thing you pick up for your lunch at work rather than somewhere you go for a meal.

Their sandwiches are good. So are Marks and Spencers. Avoid Benjy's (another chain) like the plague.

Ditto to David. I rely on Pret for a quick and very cheap lunch. Their soups are very good. Another relatively cheap place to eat is the bar/bistro opposite One Aldwych. Very nice.

Pret-a-Manger and Mark & Spencers. You will have no trouble finding them. They have fresh food and fruits. Our best eat in restaurants were the small places we happened upon while walking. Do check the menus before going in so you don't get any surprises. Enjoy and mind the gap!

Dim sum's always a great option for an inexpensive lunch, and London's Chinatown has a number that offer cart service on weekdays as well as weekends. We liked Chuen Cheng Ku.

Indian's another great option. Particularly good was New Tayyabs. Open for dinner only, BYOB.

Pubs often have some very inexpensive, very filling options (perfect for the teens). Generally not the best quality unless you're specifically going for gastropubs (but then the price will increase).

Racine's an upmarket French restaurant not too far from Harrods, very well-reviewed, that has an early evening prix fixe that's a very good deal (though we ate later so didn't get to take advantage of it). A nice restaurant but not stuffy, and I'd be comfortable taking two well-behaved teens there (or even younger children, though Londoners seem to mostly leave their children at home).

I walked around London with a copy of Time Out's Cheap Eats in London book. It's very easy to use. There are maps that show where all the cheap restaurants are, and you can see reviews of each one. I used their recommendations several times, and they never let me down.

A useful website where you can search for London restaurants by location, price, cuisine and ambiance is www.toptable.co.uk. It also has sample menus so you can get an idea of the type of food they serve and prices. There are sometimes good offers available like 3 courses for £15 (Boulevard Brasserie in Covent Garden is a good one for this).

The website is not exhaustive however, and I agree with previous posters about Wagamama's (www.wagamama.co.uk) and Belgo (www.belgo-restaurants.com). I can also recommend Strada (www.strada.co.uk) and for quick sandwiches and snacks, Pret a Manger (http://www.pret.com/)is excellent.

It is also worth remembering that some pubs may not admit your teenagers if they are under 18, unless they have a separate dining area.

Have fun - and I hope you enjoy London. It's a fantastic city - but then I'm biased, because I live there!

There is an ASK Pizza in the little shopping mall at the Gloucester Road tube station that has good food, more than just pizza, and is reasonably priced.

There is also a Garfunkel's there. I don't like it at all, but it's inexpensive and some people recommend it.

"Avoid Benjy's"

Amen. They make the worst coffee I've ever payed for.

Good tip for cheap eats - go to toptable on the web. They have deals, some as high as 50% off on restaurants if you book through them. Most end by Mid May, but there may still be a few.

Best values in London are Indian and Chinese fare--tho more expensive than in the States--sorry I don't have any restaurant names, plus they serve late into the eve- whereas pubs stop serving around 8-9 pm. I grabbed sandwiches from Pret if I was squeezing every hour out of the day, tasted like cardboard. My preference would be one of those little cheese shops/bakeries for a biscuit with jam and clotted cream and a wedge of cheese and a little fruit or you can find a hearty pub lunch or some ":California style" (says so on the menu!) with wraps and salads. Enjoy all the walking!

I wholeheartedly second the recommendations for Belgo Centraal for their beat the clock special and Pizza Express (much more upscale than it sounds). My 2 teens loved both of these places on our trips to London -- so much that we had to eat at both places twice on each of our trips!

Susan

Like Sunny, I used the Time Out Cheap Eats and found it very good. It's also quite small, so easy to carry around.

It's also nice to get take away (sandwiches or whatever) and sit in a park or church yard to eat, especially in the summer.

We ate at the Methodist Center cafeteria across from Westminster Abbey when we were there in May and found it tasty and inexpensive. The web site is http://www.c-h-w.com/cafe/index.shtml.

Busaba Eathai, 110 Wardour Street, Soho. Excellent Thai food for about 10$ for a main dish, which is cheap according to London standards. If you go during regular lunch/dinner hours, be prepared to cue, cause they don't take reservations. For even cheaper Thai food I second the Wagamama chain. Fastfood, the healthier way.

Went to Khan's Indian Restaurant in the Lancaster Gate area and had a meal with my daughter that was less than 14 pounds and would have easily fed a family of 4. Best Indian food I have had. I have eaten Indian food on the Pacific coast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, so this impressed me. Chinese food places are cheap and again provide much more food than you could ever finish. Ate at just a local Chinese place near Hyde Park for less than 5 pounds a person. Again would have had enough food for family of 4 easily.

Indian food in London is better than Indian food in India - I know it sounds wierd but very true. I am originally from India and lived the first 21 years of my life in Bombay, the financial capital of India. I now live in the US. My husband and I have had the best Indian food while visiting London. Not that you cannot find good Indian food in the US or India. But in London, you have better chances of simply walking into a restaurant and finding some really good food even though you knew nothing about the restaurant.

But I have to say that Indian food in London was more expensive than what we pay here in the States so I am probably not of much help to you. Simply wanted to say that anyone who has even a remote interest in Indian cuisine, London is the place to try Indian stuff.

I strongly recommend Wagamamma as well - soooo yummy. And they're everywhere. The Indian food is great, too.

Oops... : I meant 10 British Pound instead of 10 USD for Busaba Eathai