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lsercombe Mar 14th, 2011 02:54 AM

UK trip- restaurants
 
I have booked my accommodation for my UK trip. Now planning where to experience great dining experiences. Foodies, can you suggest some great restaurants? Will be staying in Edinburgh, Northumberland, Bath and London.

Thanks

jamikins Mar 14th, 2011 02:59 AM

What type of food and what price range?

jamikins Mar 14th, 2011 03:00 AM

We use www.toptable.co.uk for reviews and to book restaurants in the UK. You can get specials and read reviews as well as look at sample menus.

lsercombe Mar 14th, 2011 03:05 AM

Thanks for the website. Not looking for gourmet every night- rather the freshest and indicative of the particular area

jamikins Mar 14th, 2011 03:07 AM

We are big foodies - One that we like is Roast at Borough Market (and of course we love Borough Market: http://www.boroughmarket.org.uk/)

http://www.roast-restaurant.com/

lsercombe Mar 14th, 2011 03:15 AM

Yum! Looks like Roast is worth a visit. Now for all the rest of the nights!

tarquin Mar 14th, 2011 04:59 AM

Just ate at 101 Thai near Stamford Brook tube station and Chilli Cool in Leigh Street - both good.

PalenQ Mar 14th, 2011 06:27 AM

Now planning where to experience great dining experiences>

Well for great dining experiences you may want to do a typical British pub lunch or go to one of Britain's plethora of ethnic restaurants - Indian and Pakistani and Chinese restaurants abound and for a real typical thing the British cafe, serving typical food locals eat albeit greasy - now you may only want to do this once for the experience as well as pop into the iconic British 'chippie' for fish and chips. You need not spend a ton of money to have a great dining experience IMO.

lizziea06 Mar 14th, 2011 08:13 AM

Here are my recommendations:

London:
Excellent gastropubs
Harwood Arms:
http://www.harwoodarms.com/
Hawksmoor Seven Dials
http://www.thehawksmoor.co.uk/sd.php

Asian:
Yauatcha (Dim Sum)
http://www.yauatcha.com/
Dinings (Sushi)
http://www.dinings.co.uk/
Roka (Sushi)
http://rokarestaurant.com/
Bn Shan (Chinese)
http://www.timeout.com/london/restau...:21319/ba-shan

French
Cafe Boheme:
http://www.cafeboheme.co.uk/
La Petite Maison
http://www.lpmlondon.co.uk/
Electric Brasserie:
http://www.electricbrasserie.com/all-day-menu/

Misc:
Have one of the famous martinis at Dukes Hotel:
http://www.dukeshotel.com/
Have breakfast at the Wolsely:
http://www.thewolseley.com/
Browse cookbooks and sample lunch in the test kitchen at Books for Cooks:
http://www.booksforcooks.com/

caroline_edinburgh Mar 14th, 2011 08:51 AM

Edinburgh's best IMO :

- Michelin starred restaurant - 1) Martin Wishart - the best
- Michelin starred restaurant - 2) not as good as MW but still vg and uses more quirky Scottish ingredients
- Michelin starred restaurant - 3) mad, unique food
- pub food - King's Wark
- gastropub type British food, casual style restaurant & surprisingly cheap - The Dogs
- cheapish casual cafe style seafood especially mussels - Mussel Inn.

There are various mid to upper priced specifically 'Scottish' restaurants - haven't been to any for quite a while but Stac Polly always used to be reliable.

Not recommending any ethnic restaurants as you say you want 'indicative of a particular area' so assume in Edinburgh, you want more or less British or Scottish food ?

Morgana Mar 14th, 2011 09:44 AM

Where will you be staying in Northumberland? - it's a big county.
For my birthday this year (May) we are having dinner in the treehouse at Alnwick Gardens, so looking forward to it.
www.alnwickgarden.com/eat/eat-in-the-treehouse
My food bible is Hardens, it's never yet let me down.
www.hardens.com/restaurants/uk

Morgana Mar 14th, 2011 09:46 AM

Meant to mention Craster, famous for its kippers - you can smell them smoking all over the village. The Jolly Fisherman does a cheap and cheerful lunch using local produce. The crab sarnies are famous!
www.silk8234.fsnet.co.uk/

bachslunch Mar 14th, 2011 09:52 AM

The best fish and chip place I tried in London was Masters Super Fish on the south bank of London near the Old Vic. They're closed Monday, from all reports.

julia_t Mar 14th, 2011 10:59 AM

In Bath, my favourite restaurant is Raphaels...

http://www.raphaelrestaurant.co.uk/

It's just across and up from the theatre on Upper Borough Walls.

I also like the Lebanese help-yourself-to-all-you-can-eat place which is on the upper floor of the Podium centre - just look for the Waitrose supermarket, the Podium shopping centre is right next to it and also leads off Pulteney Bridge, and take the escalator up to the food court.

bachslunch Mar 14th, 2011 01:19 PM

If you're looking for real old-fashioned British standards (steak and kidney pudding, steak and oyster pie, game dishes, sticky toffee pudding, and such), Rules is a good place to go for this. Porter's isn't bad for this cuisine and costs less, but I liked Rules better.

For Indian food, I liked both Moti Mahal and Veeraswamy. The latter has a pre-theater two course meal that was very reasonably priced.

bachslunch Mar 15th, 2011 04:53 AM

Sorry, correction to the above after consulting some notes taken later. The Indian restaurants I went to were Moti Mahal and Mela -- did not go to Veeraswamy. But the pre-theater meal at Mela was very good. My error.

caroline_edinburgh Mar 15th, 2011 05:17 AM

Oops, seem to have missed out some important details from my list of 'Edinburgh's best IMO' - sorry, I did it in a hurry. Here it is filled out :

- Michelin starred restaurant - 1) Martin Wishart - the best
- Michelin starred restaurant - 2) The Kitchin - not as good as MW but still vg and uses more quirky Scottish ingredients
- Michelin starred restaurant - 3) 21212 - mad, unique food
- pub food - King's Wark
- gastropub type British food, casual style restaurant & surprisingly cheap - The Dogs
- cheapish casual cafe style seafood especially mussels - Mussel Inn.

tjhome1 Mar 15th, 2011 11:58 AM

You have some great options in Bath. It would make a good contrast to your city restaurant focus if you were able to get out to Combe Hay - it's a little village about 5 miles from the centre of Bath - if your trip is in summer you could make time for a great short walk around this lovely little village - I grew up in the next door village and when I was a kid we used to cycle to Combe Hay to the most lovely little sweet shop that was run by a very old lady - it was so old fashioned and from another age even back in the 70's and now sadly gone. The object of your visit though is the Wheatsheaf http://www.wheatsheafcombehay.com
The food here is now rated as being very good and the setting is quintessentially English.

Another great option is Olive Tree. We've eaten there twice and it gets very good reports. The location is great too for either a pre or post dinner stroll along the Royal Crescent and around the Circus - so some of Britain's greatest architecture as well as a great meal.

BigRuss Mar 15th, 2011 12:24 PM

What does "the freshest" mean? It's like Miller beer saying it has more flavor than Bud -- yeah, but bodily waste has more flavor than water. And "indicative of the particular area"? London has 7.7 million people, is a complete melting pot, and is the largest city in Western Europe. Would you consider Polish or Slavic food "indicative"? After all, other than Warsaw, Chicago, and Krakow, London may be the fourth-most populous city ranked by people of Polish descent.

You want indicative of the particular area, go Indian. The national dish of the UK is chicken tikka masala. This applies in Scotland as well as England (yes, I know they're both part of the UK and some Scots still bang on about getting screwed by the Treaty of Union, point remains valid). Kerala in London off Regents Street was good.

The other national dish of the UK (at least to those of us whose country revolted from Mother England's yoke) is fish and chips -- the Gorgie Fish Bar in Edinburgh would work for that if it still exists because the portions were huge and everything is fried (the menu was like the State Fair of Texas only it was a storefront outside the playing ground of one of Edinburgh's allegedly professional football sides). There's also a pub under the DLR Tower Gateway station overpass on Minories (that's the street name) in London that had great fish & chips too but the name escapes me.

That said, in Scotland you ought to be able to get EXTREMELY good salmon in many a place.

caroline_edinburgh Mar 16th, 2011 05:03 AM

Sadly I've never had good fish & chips from a fish & chip shop in Edinburgh and after 18 years here have had to conclude that the natives prefer their chips soggy. I'd stick to sampling fish & chips elsewhere or eat them in a pub here - the King's Wark is good for that as well as for everything else. The Seadogs fish & chips is good but they don't do it with the 'normal' types of fish, i.e. haddock / cod, so is not typical.


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