I posted this elsewhere, but don't see why I shouldn't repeat it here.
Charlotte Street is just north of where I work. It's full of bars and restaurants, for which it's pretty famous. These are some of the ones I frequent.
My favourite spot is Salt Yard, which is a Spanish/Italian hybrid with the occasional British theme. It has an excellent range of charcuterie and tapas to choose from and its wine list is very good (another place that sells txakoli, which I mentioned here). If Cathryn's reading this, I notice they also have a pudding menu with no less than six decent pudding wines on it. Book in advance because it's normally full.
La Cantina is worth a mention for its homestyle Italian cooking at reasonable prices served with lots of good will (and they will throw in a glass or two of grappa if you chat to the owner).
If money is no object (I went on a company tab and would probably continue to leave it to corporate occasions) then Roka serves excellent Japanese food - you can buy your own bottles of something expensive and they will keep it for you between visits... we had one of the tasting menus (£50+ a head and then one of our crew kept ordering more dishes, despite the waitresses protestatios. Result: far too much food and an enormous bill).
For Korean barbecues, Koba is good - it's packed with Koreans at lunchtime and I've been turned away in the evening once because it was full up (but happily that meant I discovered La Cantina (above). Great value.
I haven't been to Pescatori for some time and I should fix that because I remember that the Italian food there is really very good. My sister took me there for my birthday a while back and I recall that we were both impressed with the fish we had. I seem to recall that it was fairly pricey though.
Fancy a burger? The Eagle Bar Diner serves easily the best I've eaten in London (mine's a 8oz rare-cooked classic with Monterey Jack and bacon together with skinny fries and helpings of chilli salsa and parsley mayo on the side, please). It's cocktails are good, too. The only downers are that it can be very busy, so you might have to wait a while for a table and when you get one, you might be next to a speaker which means you might be deafened by the in-house DJ.
I'm hungry now.
Posted by dompannell at June 3, 2007 4:34 PM