I Took a Bite Out of London

Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.

Where we are: We’re still in London, where the weather has cooled down and all is well (and delicious).

I Took a Bite Out of London

Not too long ago, someone asked what I think is the world’s best food city.

I gave it about ten seconds of consideration, and said London. She made a face of shock and distaste.

British food has a reputation for being stodgy and beige and bland, but that’s an outdated stereotype.

Nowadays when I visit London, the best of everything in the world is in walking distance, and just waiting to satisfy my greedy lunchtime hunger. Yesterday Lee and I stood in line for hand-pulled Xianese belt noodles. To our left, the air smelled like sizzling Turkish gozleme. Behind us, someone was eating Nigerian jollof rice at a picnic table. Without losing our place in line, we could see a Uyghur dumpling vendor and a Neapolitan pizza oven. If we’d wanted Michelin-rated fine dining, we could’ve walked around the corner.

It wasn’t some special ‘international food festival’ event. It was just … Thursday.

I don’t think I can name a more diverse city, and with radical diversity comes good food. Nowhere else on earth can you walk three blocks and eat your way across continents. Yesterday, our ‘fast food’ choices included everything from West African to Turkish to Chinese to Italian. If we’d wandered further, we could have added Sri Lankan, Yemeni, Bangladeshi, Jamaican, Nepalese—pick a place on the map, and someone in London is cooking its food, often better than you’d find in its country of origin.

It’s a magic formula that Lee and I have witnessed before: take the food of a less-wealthy country, plop it down in a rich, competitive city, and magic happens.

When we ate Burmese food in Myanmar, it was cheap and delicious—and to be honest, a bit risky. I completely lost 36 hours to a bad bowl of soup in Bagan.

But in London, Burmese food comes with refrigeration, health standards, beautiful seasonal produce, and an uber-motivated immigrant chef, trying to impress an audience that has tasted everything.

And here’s the especially special thing: you don’t get just generic ‘Indian’ or ‘Chinese’ or ‘Middle Eastern’ food here. You get specialists—Punjabi tandoori joints, Lebanese bakeries, Bangladeshi curry houses, Nepalese momo shops—each one proud, authentic, and competitive.

We (and I mean I) often want to visit a place precisely to explore its native cuisine. Of course people come to London looking for ‘British’ food. We all want to eat at a pub, order fish and chips, have a Sunday roast or a full English breakfast. I admit to a deep, abiding love of British baked goods: rock cakes, Eccles cakes, Bakewell tarts. Fruit cake in July? Yes please.

But if you stick to ‘British’ food, you’re missing the point. London is the only place I know where the world’s best flavors are all right next to each other, demanding you try something new. If you don’t go home with at least one memory of something delicious that you’ve never tasted before, you’ve done London wrong.

So next time you’re here, don’t just eat like a tourist. Eat like London is the whole world—because for food lovers, it is.

I’ll die on that hill.

Take care,

Lisa

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