Ay tips for cheap eats in London. We are staying near Victoria Station, ut any good budget advice would be great!!

In Thayer St. at the bottom of Marylebone High St. W1, there is a small Italian delicatessen, for under 10GBP per head you can have a three course (or two heavier courses) meal with copious amounts of fresh breads and delightful olive oils. It's only open until 7PM so is more of a lunctime place. Great food, and superb value.

Café Piccadilly is an infamous spot in Soho where gangsters and royalty dined side by side - cheap food, nothing so special, but charming in a nostalgic retrospective kind of way|!

I love Busaba Eathai on Wardour Street, Soho. Very decent Thai food for very decent prices. Expect long cues at dining times, no reservation possible. They only have big square tables, so you'll probably share it with others, but that's part of the fun.

JD Wetherspoons is a cheap and cheerful pub chain in London where you can get cheap food and drink. They are everywhere should be one nearby Victoria

There was a restaurant- Wagamama - near the Br. Museum. Cheap Japanese food at long tables. So good we ate there twice. Found it in Cheap Eats London. Also any pub has a ploughman's--

One of my favorite ways to eat economically and enjoy the city was to buy a sandwich and crisps or fruit at a grocery (or one of the many sandwich shops) and eat my picnic in a park. You can relax, people watch and get a feel for what the city really is, home to many people, not just a big tourist attraction.

Soho will have lots of cheap eats, don't expect any memorable meals, well not memorable from a cuisine perspective, but more poor service with charm.

Soho also has fabulous restaurants and bars, but not budget so I won't waste space and time going into the details!

Go to the ubiquitous Marks and Spencer
grocery stores (like Whole Foods) as they have tons of prepared sandwiches and salads and stuff. You'll be on the queues at the 'tills" with all the local working class.

M+S working class? It's the most classless retailer on the planet.

THE best cheap food has to be the Wong Kei in Wardour Street, where you get outstanding Cantonese lunch dishes for about £3-4, as well as all the attitude you could possibly want. I've even seen the waiters beat up a customer for insisting on speaking the language we call Mandarin (which among some Cantonese is seen as the language of far fouler imperialists than English).

A restaurant dedicated almost entirely to the proposition that the customer is always wrong. Go there before the New Agers start ruining it by politeness classes.

If you are in the Covent Garden area be sure to stop at The West Cornwall Pasty Co. and get a traditional Cornish pie. Yes, this can be considered street food but is really yummy and you can set to eat it if you wish. It is worth the trip if you are in the area.

hey flanneruk-every Marks and Spencer
grocery in the downtown area was packed at all hours with reseidents and workers. It may be classless, but man they are a draw for the goods.
so where do you come off?

We also stayed in the Victoria Station area and had good Italian food at Bella Pasta (a chain) and a great pizza at Pizza Express. Nothing fancy but good food at reasonable prices. We also enjoyed the Duke of York (restaurant upstairs. All of these places have menus out front so you can see if anything appeals to you in your price range before you go in. There's also a Sainsbury's grocery store where you can buy drinks, fruit, sandiches, etc.

Sorry, I think the Bella Pasta is now called Bella Italia.

not to try to speak for flanner but he was commenting on the "working class" part of your comment. As m&s is a british institution whose long time reputation is exactly that it caters to the working classes all the way up to the queen, the comment sounds a little funny to the british. actually, however, more recently, the food part of the business has a more upscale reputation rather than working class. no big deal, just explaining why i think the comment was noted. anyway, i think you had a good suggestion.

Tip...there is no such thing as "downtown" in britain

Used to frequent Wong Kei's in my student days but the "service" gets old fast... Jen's Cafe, also in China Town, has a selection of cheap Chinese dishes for about £3-5. It's more of a cafe/diner than restaurant and probably better for lunch or quick dinners than long, leisurely evenings.

Round the corner from that, on Little Newport Street, is Zipangu, an inexpensive Japanese restaurant - returned there last week as wanted a budget option in the area - good, simple food for the price.

For another cheap lunch option stick in Chinatown and order a selection of dim sum. Individual dishes are usually priced £1.75 to £3.00 and you'd probably want around 7-8 of them between two people.

Wagamamas, mentioned above, is a chain and has locations all round London. It's allright, but I find the fast turnaround they operate to a little off-putting. For that reason I prefer it for lunch.

Other ethnic restaurants around London offer great value - Turkish places are excellent - I don't mean those that offer nothing but donner kebabs but the ones that have a much broader menu. My favourite one is up in North Finchley so I can't recommend one in the Victoria area. Thai, Greek and Indian can all be budget options too.

Sandwiches have already been mentioned. Pret a manger is a popular choice - one can get cheaper sandwiches for sure at the tiny little sandwich bars local workers frequent for lunch but many like the wide choice and style of Pret. Most of the supermarkets offer great picnic lunch options from pre-made sarnies and salads to a DIY picnic of bread, cheese, deli hams etc.

best meals at moderate prices
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34460453

Msrk Va:

Two nations divided by a common language.

As walkinaround explains, when you say "all the local working class" it sounds to us as if you're implying it's downmarket.

Clearly when I say "no, it's classless", you think I mean "it's devoid of class, tacky".

'Classless' in British means universal. It doesn't mean tacky. And, really, I can't think of any retailer, anywhere, whose appeal is as universal. Admittedly, its clothes have got a bit towards classless meaning a tad tacky. And the company has recently gone through a bizarre phase of management by complete idiots, who told the world they didn't like having to deal with the tastes of adults outside London. But they've now fired the lunatics and claim to have reverted to their mission of selling classy clothes and food to the whole grown-up population of all the UK.

Lesson on the use of English aside, M+S is a good suggestion for budget eating, but isn't that much better at decent food than Tesco and Sainsbury, and is rather pricier. The miniature Tesco and Sainsbury branches springing up all over are probably an even better bet.

i agree with flanner except that considering m&s iconic place in british culture it's worth a visit for all tourists.

he's right that in reality you won't find much difference in the offerings as compared to any other store.

i suspect that most visitors who do know of it's iconic status are left puzzled as they won't see anything special about it. just one of those things.

Just thinking re M&S...

Many office/retail workers go to a M&S food hall to buy sarnies etc for lunch - so in that sense it could be called a 'working class' store. However, whilst the store in its entirity is renouned as classless store, the food hall division is generally regarded in the UK as a very middle class haunt. The ''true'' working class would be more likely to shop at Asda than M&S for groceries.

Waitrose (part of the John Lewis Partnership) also has a good reputation for food - their fruit and veg department and deli counters are particularly good.

'Food For Thought' vegetarian cafe in Neal Street, Covent Garden. Open from lunchtime until early evening.