London Eats ($)

Jolene is a café-by-day-wine-bar-by-night in Newington Green. It has a little mill in the back of the restaurant where heritage grains from a farm in Gascony owned by Groove Armada’s Andy Cato are milled to make beautiful bread, pastries and pasta. A short, handwritten blackboard menu also offers beautiful small plates. The atmosphere is really nice and relaxed. It’s hip and cool without being pretentious. I really enjoy going there.

I find myself going a lot to the Turkish restaurants in East London. They’re pretty legendary. There’s one called Umut 2000 that does Turkish mangal food. It’s pretty much always on our list of places to go-to after work. It’s a chefs’ favourite for sure. It’s really good, tasty food. You can stay there until quite late, and it’s no-fuss which, ironically, is what chefs really want. We like that vibe because it’s different to what we do day-to-day. --- We head to Umut 2000 in Dalston (close to The Clove Club) for fantastic Turkish food from some of the best chefs to have worked at legendary Turkish restaurant, Mangal Ocakbasi.

I dream about Roti King. It’s the best place to get roti canai in London. The flaky, buttery and crisp flatbreads with small bowls of mutton curry and sambal are up there with my favourite things to eat in the city. I started cooking Malaysian and Thai food in the 80s as a nine-year-old in Glasgow, Scotland. I’ve never been to either country, but this place always reminds me of the time that I began teaching myself about the foods of the world; watching cookery programmes, reading books and buying ingredients like kecap manis, galangal and fresh turmeric to cook with and learn about. Put up with the odd location, small queues and sometimes random seating order; it’s worth it.

The Good Egg is an Israeli neighbourhood restaurant that my parents would have really enjoyed. It’s one of the first restaurants to get their start using crowdfunding, and it was really nice to be part of their beginning. It was started by three friends, and they’re all lovely. I’ve known them for years now. The food is really fantastic. Like a delicious sabich; an Israeli sandwich of freshly baked pita bread stuffed with fried aubergine, salad, soft-boiled egg and tahini. There’s also a delicious cornbread, and beautiful dips like beetroot hummus with labneh and pickled rhubarb.

A quintessential pub in London is The Cow, a pub in Notting Hill that’s been around for ages. It’s legendary. It’s one of my favourite pubs in London. I love to get down there when I can. It’s fairly old-school and super cool. It serves local seafood; plates of oysters, whelks, clams and cockles. You order loads of seafood and drink Guinness and English beer. Eating oysters together with drinking beer has been a London tradition for ages, and The Cow sort of keeps that tradition alive. It’s a unique seafood experience.

Sweetings is one of the oldest restaurants around. It’s a place I love to go for lunch. It has a great seafood bar. Again, very English – cockles, periwinkles, clams. It’s in the city and is mainly filled with city workers on weekday lunches. It feels like another time and I find it a little escapism. (Tomos Parry) Sweetings is working chaos. We all love chaos, especially when it works. Just go with its flow. I (Fergus Henderson) first went there with my father when I was a youngish lad. The city has obviously changed since then. But as the city’s changed, it’s stayed where it is, backing its sails and rigging against all those behemoths of super tankers which just march through the financial world. It is overlooking the brand new Bloomberg building, which is the most expensive building in the world kind of thing, and it’s still there. It’s comfortable in its own skin. Serving as it does serve. That is classic British food with an emphasis on fish. We always keep a weather eye on it, making sure they’re all happy. And of course, we go as often as we can. It’s stood the march of time, but it’s there and it must always be there. It’s an institution to be treasured.

There’s a great place called Little Duck Picolry. It’s so lovely and casual; you sit around a big beautiful counter where the chef kind of hangs out. You know, he’ll casually announce that he’s just pulled a pie fresh from the oven or something else magnificently delicious. It’s just so nice and relaxed. From Little Duck: The Picklery is our fermenting kitchen and wine bar - we're open for lunch Wednesdays to Sundays and dinner all week. Our menu changes weekly, and our cooking is simple and seasonal. It's here we make all our seasonal ferments, pickles and drinks - all of which you can buy ready jarred from our fridge or by the gram. The Picklery is our workshop, but its also a small intimate restaurant space. Our large kitchen counter is the centrepiece, and you’re invited to grab a seat, order something to eat and enjoy the workings of life in our kitchen. In the evening, the lights go down, dinner is served, we open great bottles of natural wines and we take reservations. We have tables in the window for 4 and bar seating too.