Six of One: The Best Gyros in North-North London
Six of One: The Best Gyros in North-North London
Plus five other places to try across the capital this Bank Holiday weekend.
Six of One is a column dedicated to London restaurant recommendations. In each issue, six writers will share a restaurant, bakery, cafe or takeaway spot that they believe deserves to be better known. You can find the full Six of One back catalogue here.
Today’s recommendations are from Yanyu Sun, Samir Jeraj, Harry Lambous, Ivan Kirwan-Taylor, Anya Ryan, and Tomé Morrissy-Swan.
To read all the recommendations, as well as the back catalogue, please subscribe below.
1. Centre Point Food Store
Over the last few years, there have been two things I’ve always done on trips to central London. Firstly, I visit some all-time favourite restaurants in Chinatown: Wong Kei, Dumplings’ Legend, Four Seasons. Secondly, I stroll through the best supermarkets and bakeries, like Loon Fung (great deli and butcher), SeeWoo (for frozen food and cookware) and Kowloon Restaurant’s shopfront bakery (for a fresh youtiao), which themselves sustain and supply the restaurants and their patrons outside of service. They often have a great selection of deli offerings, fresh baked goods and meat prepared for great Asian home cooking. Taking away these products has always felt like bringing a piece of the dining culture home with me.
I recently added Centre Point to my list of ‘places to wander’ in the centre of the city. Sharing its name with the landmark 1960s skyscraper located at the intersection of Tottenham Court Road and New Oxford Street, Centre Point Korean Supermarket has an excellent and extensive deli selection: from fishcakes stir-fried with sweet onions and carrots and dried squid marinated in spicy garlic sauce and sesame oil to braised pork belly. These Korean side dishes, known as banchan, are the perfect accompaniments for a portion of rice with an egg, a bowl of noodle soup, or any home-cooked meal. They are cooked fresh from the restaurant at the back of the supermarket.
When it comes to great Korean food, one might think straight away of New Malden, the Koreatown in southwest London. But I think Centre Point holds its own and, as an experience, stands up to the best of what’s in New Malden. On a walk down bustling New Oxford Street, passing by Arcade Food Hall, with its building enveloped by glass windows, you might look up at the apparently all-seeing concrete skyscraper and wonder: where is the Korean treat I’ve been craving to take home? The other Centre Point is the answer. Yanyu Sun
73 New Oxford St, WC1A 1DG
Below the paywall: The best house-made gyros in north-north London, mandazi in Northwood, a Japanese oasis on the A41, the community curry hut of Poplar, and a new Romanian restaurant on one of the most underrated streets in London.
