If you are a traveller who likes to eat, I hope by now you have discarded the idea that food in London is still the punchline to a joke. Of course not everywhere is great or even adequate. Even in New Orleans, you can still get a bad meal, a city that used to pride itself on just the opposite.
Food tours are a relatively new phenomenon in Europe, with a few exceptions. Now, however,
things are picking up as people realize there are happy monomaniacs like us who want this sort of thing. My tour in Rome last year was such a success that I wanted to try the company's new London operation. (They're starting in Prague and Amsterdam shortly.)
Eating London Food Tours runs six days a week, a walking tour of about three and a half hours. Not all that time is spent vertically – by my count, we sat down at six different places to do sampling, and stood at a couple of others. And it's full of the history of London's East End, which is where it takes place, leaving from the old Smithfield Market.
Our group was around eight people, mostly Americans, three generations, with every degree of travel experience. Our guide, Emily, lived in the neighborhood, which made things even more personal. So where did we go? Here are some of the spots and some photos.
We started out at St. JOHN Bread & Wine with a bacon butty, or sandwich. English bacon, of course, is not like ours, much meatier and not cooked to shattering crispness. Fergus "Nose To Tail" Henderson, whose mother ship St. JOHN Smithfield restaurant this is an offspring of, loves the pleasures of swine. He uses heirloom pork with a careful brining and housemade bread, lightly grilled, with a little butter. (This is leaner bacon than what we see here, of course.) It reminded me of first-rate country ham with its smoke and cure.
Another stop was at a fish and chip shop, Poppie's, that began serving in 1945. The fish is fresh and wondrful, the fat chips absolutely typical. The classic mushy peas, made from dried peas, is the side dish. I think you may have to be raised with it. Insider tip (not from the tour but from a Londoner): If you want fish and chips, don't get it at a pub. It's apt to be mass-produced and awful. Go to a chip shop.
We tasted English cheese, sold, amazingly enough, at a shop run by famous French cheese merchant Androuet, and three curries to sample at Aladin, a restaurant on Brick Lane, a street of Indian restaurants. And then there's the pub. More accurately, there's Lenny and the pub. The Pride of Spitalfields has a plump and serene four-legged greeter. Lenny is actually quite famous, but he graciously allowed our group to sample both lager and cider.
There was more, and plenty of street art that the neighborhood is known for, plus buildings like this Jewish soup kitchen which at one point was so crowded with refugees that they literally ran a line in one door and out the other.
Three and a half hours, a large amount of food and a great deal of fun.