interesting restaurant lunch recommendation please

[Fibilou]

something that isn't exactly the same as everywhere else, is not Gordon Ramsay. For a thursday lunch in January. Budget around £150 inc. wine. A proper meal, not some pseudo japanese tosh that is far from japanese or overpriced mezze.

Is it me or do all the restaurants just seem to blend into one at the moment ? i am utterly bored of restaurant food right now, and that is a really dire thing for me to say.

I wish a chef would invent a new cuisine like the Nouvelle movement in the 70s. Or reinvent Escoffier. Just for something different from endlessly identical meals in samey surroundings served by samey staff.

My husband has asked me to book the table ("not le gavroche again please") and I have just run out of steam. I look at the menus and nothing stands out, they are all the same old stuff every time.

Edited November 20, 2007 by Fibilou (log)

[Andy Lynes]

not le gavroche again please

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F**k me, even I'm not that jaded! Go to a matinee at the National or something else you might have a chance of actually enjoying instead.

[ravelda]

How about Foliage - £29 for four courses which you select from a fairly broad selection. Chris staines has some very interesting plating techniques and pairs flavours and textures extremly well - certainly not your normal hum-drum meal. If you want more courses I think they are and extra £8.50 each. Otherwise Bacchus is wort thinking about for something a bit different. Equally the recently opened Hibiscus.

[Peter Green]

I'm very partial to St. John for lunch.

Well within your budget, and always an interesting menu (and educational).

[ravelda]

Or indeed Magdalen - top place!

[MobyP]

If you want haute, go to Paris.

Or if London, La Noisette.

[naebody]

That's some heavy-duty ennui you've got going on there.

I propose that you blow your budget on a nice bottle of Henri Giraud Fut de Chenes, then take it to The Golden Hind for fish and chips.

[nikkib]

https://www.eurostar.com/dynamic/_SvBoPasse...K&_AGENCY=ESTAR

£118 return on the eurostar to Paris and a little bistro in le marais or the like if london is THAT dull

[battleofthebulge]

https://www.eurostar.com/dynamic/_SvBoPasse...K&_AGENCY=ESTAR

£118 return on the eurostar to Paris and a little bistro in le marais or the like if london is THAT dull

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Or Lille is even closer ..

I'd also recommend Foliage.

For something slightly different, there's Le Cercle - very sexy room, and the 'Fermier' section of the menu currently has some interesting bits like teal.

How about Hibiscus? Or is that just tooo dull?

[Andy Fenn]

I second hibiscus. It's certainly not boring.

Moby, why Noisette? You been recently? I hear they're selling up, and moving Bjorn elsewhere.

Greenhouse was very good last week.

But I agree, for really interesting (subjective of course, but to my mind) high end food, outside of London is better (Fat Duck, Midsummer House, Sat Bains, Champignon Sauvage etc).

However, London is VERY good in the mid range these days (Arbutus, Wild Honey, Magdalen, Angelus, Great Queen St, l'autre pied). Which certainly shows where the current trend in London is, contrary to Zoticus' and others' concerns about the dangerous and terrible spread of "molecular Gastronomy" expressed elsewhere. I tend to think it is the provincial new openings that punch above their weight in that sense.

[fisherman]

You beat me to it Andy, I was just going to say, get your arse on a train and go to Sats in Nottingham if the London scene bores you so much, actually, get on the train and go there anyway!