London Eats ($$)

Trullo is a lovely Italian restaurant in Highbury. Confidently unfussy Italian cooking in a homely upstairs room or downstairs bar. Chef Tim Saidatan was one of our very first chefs. It’s become this happy, local restaurant with a good wine list and again, very local. I think that’s quite important. There’s a couple of other good restaurants just nearby Trullo, which means it’s quite a nice, little spot to go to and explore. Tim’s also gone on to open Padella in Borough Market. It’s very busy and always has a queue, but that’s fine. Good pasta. Good space. Good vibe. Good folk do good things.

The River Cafe is a timeless classic. It’s home to so many happy memories. Just to walk into the room is a pleasure in itself. We always smile while walking to our table. You just know you’re going to have a good time. And particularly at lunch time, you know you’re going to have a very good lunch. It’s very London metropolitan but clean, airy, spacious. The architecture itself is all part of a time and it’s just as fresh today as it ever was. It has a great Italian wine list. It’s really about the chefs, the people. The people who have been through it; the way they cook, the way they care, the way they source ingredients. It’s a place that you tend to not go to that often, which almost makes it a thrill when we do. --- It’s on the wrong side of town for me but The River Café is one of the best dining rooms in London. Some places just have “it” – The River Café always has and always will have IT.

A Pub Locals Drink [and Eat] At Pubs are a British Institution. Sometimes it’s hard to find a decent pub and you start scratching your head, but The Canton Arms is always worth the trip. It has a great big dining room. It’s got good beer, it’s busy, it’s always full of locals. One of the owners, Jonathan Jones, used to work for me (Trevor) at The Fire Station. He went on with a couple of others from St. John to open up Anchor and Hope, which really became the best of gastropubs, although we hate the term. So, The Canton Arms has come through those ranks and it’s another really good local. For us, it’s an easy one and one that we’re happy to send people to. This is our town, we want to make sure people enjoy it." (Chef Fergus Henderson, Chef Trevor Gulliver of St John)

40 Maltby Street is certainly a real gem. I’d say it’s in my top three favourite places to eat in London. It’s in south London, which is far from me, but if I lived closer, I’d probably be there three to four times a week. It’s fantastic. The food is brilliantly simple with a daily changing menu and an exciting natural wine selection. Up on the bar there’s an English ham that gets sliced to order. I order it like I would jamon in a Spanish restaurant. 40 Maltby street is miles away from anywhere useful, but it is close to Tower Bridge (The bridge American people think is “London Bridge”) and the opening hours are unusual, but the food is simple, and spot on, every time. Everything on the menu is brilliant, from Oeufs en gelee to cheese and wild garlic fritters. It’s a casual blend of British and French country cooking, with a funky wine list to go with it (sometimes a little too funky for me, but hey).

Baking classes & great breakfast

Brawn is a restaurant that I really love. It’s very close to Brat, and it sources some of the best produce in London. I can relate to its style of cooking and I feel relaxed there. The chefs are confident and focused on flavour. It’s sort of bistro-style food using incredible produce.

93 years old Soho restaurant Quo Vadis: so charming, so comforting, a little bit special and a little bit naughty. Revolutionary Karl Marx lived in the same building years before, and Marco Pierre White briefly owned it together with Artist Damien Hirst. The Hart Brothers who own it today are gracious hosts and the menu illustrations by the inimitable John Broadley always make me smile. I actually asked John to illustrate our wedding invitations because we love his stuff so much. Chef Jeremy Lee’s British food is that of seasonality, honesty and deliciousness. It’s a moment of quiet and pause in the daily bustle of Soho.

I am very fond of Indian food, and we’re lucky to get exceptional Indian food here in London. It’s a cuisine that you rarely experience a good standard of when travelling, so if I’ve been away from London, it’s usually the first meal I want to eat when I return. I have been going for almost 30 years to The Brilliant in Southall, a Punjabi restaurant that is popular with Asian families and which serves excellent food at a modest price. Dishes like aloo tikki and the methi chicken here are great, and they are one of the few Indian restaurants to make romali roti, a very thin bread.

Everybody has their favourite restaurant in Soho’s Chinatown. I’ve been to all of them and the one that stands out to me is a little place called Dumpling’s Legend. It’s not named the legend for nothing; the dumplings are super fresh and delicious. The prawn and chive, or pork dumplings are really good. So are the wontons. But it’s really all about their soup dumplings. Their stir-fries are great too. There’s a cucumber salad with garlic, chilli and coriander that I love. They’re open quite late so I might head there for a bit of dumpling action after a few pints.

CiaoCiao Bella feels out of place in central London. The restaurant’s nightly in-house pianist, the relaxed lunches washed down with house wine on its busy pavement terrace, and even the old-school spherical vending machine outside, selling miscellaneous plastic toys, might all be more at home on the Amalfi Coast than in a low-rise brick building on Bloomsbury’s Lamb’s Conduit Street, next door to a Victorian pub. (via Eater)