Food in London and Paris
 

Looking for places to feed a family of 6 (teenage boys eat alot) for dinner in these two cities. Looking for places with lots of good food at reasonable prices and a local place not a tourist trap. Would love to try some good pubs in London.

Thanks.

Try the restaurant Chartier in Paris. That and a lot of other affordable Paris restaurants are listed in:

http://troi.cc.rochester.edu/~tdip/Restaurants.html

In London you will do best in Soho and Chinatown, where many restaurants serve big portions at really low prices. Nearly all of them have menus posted and a quick look inside will tell you how busy they are and how big the portions are.

With teens, buffets are of course, always a good bet. I normally don't like buffets except if I'm doing more "experimental cuisine". We always head out to Brick Lane in London on a Sunday for a wonderful Indian/Banglidesh buffet at Cafe Naz. That will fill them for the day. There are some "all you can eat" places in Chinatown as well.

Do they like mussels? Leon's all over Paris and Belgo in London are great bets if they do.

In Paris, if I had to feed teenaged boys, I'd head to the Latin Quarter and feed them chwarmas. They are good, inexpensive and huge!

Second the vote for Leon's. When I saw a family of four raise their silver bowls for more fries... It's all you can eat I believe and teenage kids love fries no? It's touristy but the price was right and the mussels were fabulous. I also liked that there were pictures of the food so I didn't have to struggle with my limited French - ended up ordering a pig's foot at one place by mistake. It was fabulous also, but took me by surprise.

Two good source books are by Sandra Gustafson: Great Eats in London and Great Eats in Paris. Gustafson's books used to be titled "Cheap Eats in..." and they still list many good budget places.