Where do the locals eat?
 

I don't want tourist food. Where are the great spots YOU eat?

Where are you going in the UK?

While this is an often mentioned description, let me approach this in an oblique way: do you really want to go to where the locals eat? I would not want to places where locals around where I live go to. They go to cheap places that serve large portions. Rather, I would look for places where local business people (someone who can pay for quality) would take out of town colleagues (something better than the ordinary) for lunch at their own expenses (affordable.)

Many of my worst food were at restaurants populated only by the locals: the locals whose only criteria seems to be finding the cheapest food.

To get specific answers, it would help indicating the cities of interest.

London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Cotswolds. Yes, the good places the locals eat and travelers rarely hear about.

I often ask local business people or office staff for suggestions as to where to eat when traveling. It works best if I have some specific ideas about what kind of food I'm looking for, such as...
'where would you go for some really good soup?'
'...the best Sunday roast?'
'...the best (fill in local specialty here)?'
'...a nice evening meal?'
'...a special dinner?'

If I ask the receptionist at a law firm in the center of town, she may not know of a place herself but usually will ask a few of her colleagues and after a few minutes they will come up with good suggestions. Once I asked at a busy hair salon and a lively 15-minute discussion ensued amongst the stylists and all their clients chiming in, not ending until they finally found a place they could all agree on!

Of course it has a lot to do with how you approach people. If you are friendly, but not overly familiar, and polite and interested in them and apologize for interrupting, etc, I've found most people are proud of their towns and cities and eager to be of help.

I've even had people offer to lead me to the place they've suggested, or offer to telephone for a reservation for me. I've been doing this since the early 1990s and have never yet run into someone who treats me with anything less than kindness and helpfulness, even in France. And I've had many memorable meals at places I'd never have found on my own.

"London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Cotswolds. Yes, the good places the locals eat and travelers rarely hear about."

No such place exists. Nor have I ever encountered any such place anywhere in the world.

If you want recommendations for decent places to eat in the places you name, this forum is stuffed with them (except maybe in Cardiff, where I've never found anything edible, though the seaweed's fine if you cook it yourself). Just search.

We don't keep them secret from visitors - and there are NO eating places frequented by tourists only. Recommendations in reliable guidebooks (like Time Out London Eating and Drinking) apply just as much to tourists as to us.

>>and there are NO eating places frequented by tourists only<<

Possibly the Angus Steak Houses, or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. It's also usually a reasonable guide in most places to avoid anywhere that displays pictures of the food on its menus. But flanner's general point is a fair one. I suspect most of us eat out infrequently enough to be "tourists" of a kind, even in our own locality.

"Possibly the Angus Steak Houses, or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays."

See, I regularly walk past one of them. And of course it's frequented by almost no-one. Oddly, I'm not at all sure that tiny handful ARE tourists though.

Which brings us onto another point about this weird question: is there a clear difference between tourists, "locals" (ugh!) and (absolutely fundamental in London) what the ancient Athenians called metics: full-time residents who regard somewhere else as home.

There may be a difference in insular places. There absolutely isn't in London or the Cotswolds. And those puzzled people sitting in the window of the Paddington Aberdeen Steak House always look to me like recently arrived metics (language students, say, or Slovakian au pairs), rather than Tokyo office ladies doing Britain in two days.

Try the 'Good Pub Guide' for the Cotswolds- locals recommend their village pub for the beer and/or food. We have had some very good food whilst travelling with this guide to hand.

If you can narrow down your Edinburgh requirement a bit, maybe I can help?

This question is really impossible in London (well, except the aforementioned Steak Houses, and Rules, which I'd never heard of outside of this forum). Londoners eat in three ways:

1) Local to where they live, which won't be anywhere near the West End where the tourists are. This could be a nice little bistro in Chiswick or a hip new brasserie in Hackney.
2) Local to where they work, which could be the West End or could just as likely be Clerkenwell, Shoreditch or London Bridge, so widen your horizons and for lunch head to areas where Londoners work. Here you will find great eateries and NO tourists.
3) Somewhere interesting that they've read about in Time Out magazine (or Metro, the free newspaper you pick up on the Tube), so buy a copy when you arrive and off you go.

There's very few places that ONLY tourists go to, but of course anywhere near Leicester Square and Covent Garden will be tourist soaked. Step outside of these areas to mix with the locals. (I literally 'never' even walk across Leicester Square).

Just wanted to provide an example for the above.

In London Bridge, tourists head straight for Borough Market. But if you instead head for Bermondsey Street, you would find a street totally hidden from tourists but with numerous great eateries, in particular Zucca, an amazing modern italian, book several weeks in advance, Champor Champor, a really unusual Indonesian/fusion place with crazy decor and The Garrison, a really quirky gastro pub. Book all of these WELL in advance. There are many other eateries on this street, catering to workers from the local HQ offices of Kurt Geigar, G Star and the fashion museum. This is just one example of many many areas in London where you won't see a tourist but will eat and experience some of the best London has to offer.

Kate, you've just become the London restaurant correspondent.....

In London try La Famiglia, Prince William and Kate eat there it is excellent and not too terribly priced. ANother good one is Vrenosi for relly inexpensive try Orsin or Carluccios. ALso like Frankies Criterion and Marco Pierre WHite Steakhouse. One of our favorites in the Cotswold is Wesley House in WInchcomber , righ next to Stow on the Wold.

A couple of US friends of mine tried to find 'local' food once and because in New York sometimes the scruffiest places serve good food, they went into a real dump of a greasy spoon cafe. They were very disappointed because the food was terrible. However, the place was full of 'locals' and it was very cheap, so greg's observation above applies. This was in Harrogate, which has no shortage of good reasonably priced places to eat.

In Edinburgh some years ago I saw a small fish & chips shop with a lunchtime line of locals. Being desirous of a "Scotch egg", which I had not yet had, I got on line, and after about a 10-min wait had an authentic, newspaper-wrapped item from a decidedly non-tourist establishment.

It was absolutely awful.

((I))

>>Kate, you've just become the London restaurant correspondent.....<<

Eating is my main purpose in life...

One tip I always give to visitors is to bypass the recommendations in the major guidebooks and instead invest in a copy of Hardens, which gives very accurate reviews of all the best places, from cheap to top end. Look out for any restaurant that is rated 112, 121, or 211 as these will be top notch.

And never just drop into any old caff that looks busy, it might just be really cheap!

Do Scottish chippies sell scotch eggs? Weirdos up there.

I was eating a pub lunch in London once in an area without tourists and there were only a few locals in the place. They burst out laughing when they saw my face when I tried to swallow some of the grub, it was absolutely execrable.

Wow Kate -- those look great. I think I'm going to have to hunt down your comments on other threads and see what else you recommend. We go into London about once a month and almost always eat at the same Mexican (I know, Mexican in London!?!?) place. We need to branch out a bit.