The best and worst of London food in 2023
The Vittles Review of the Year, part 2, by Jonathan Nunn
Good morning and welcome to Vittles! We hope that you’ve had a wonderful Christmas.
This is part 2 of the Vittles Review of the Year. Part 1 was a conversation between Adam Coghlan and Jonathan Nunn, which you can read here. To read the whole thing, you can subscribe for £5/month or £45/year which gives you access to our entire back catalogue of essays, reviews and guides.
The best and worst of London food in 2023
We’re not out of the weeds yet, but 2023 felt like the first full year of true growth in the London restaurant scene since the start of the pandemic. The spontaneous creativity of those uncertain pandemic-era businesses – perfecting sandwiches, boreks, biryanis – has started to synthesise with a resurgent central London scene and a noticeably mature set of new openings. In that sense, the years it most resembles is the post-crash era of 2009 and 2010, which saw the advent of hyped burgers (check), American barbecue (double check), and reworked comfort food for adults (Bouchon Racine and The Devonshire), but also a genuine sea change in how we eat out. Adding to the sense of an era being passed onto the next generation is that Russell Norman, one of the architects of that resurgence, tragically died this year. For me Spuntino, which Norman opened in Soho in 2011, felt like the first restaurant that had been made solely for me. I remember going there, learning what a Negroni was, eating deep fried olives, and feeling that this is what it meant to be an adult. Norman’s passing leaves a huge hole in London dining. I wonder what that restaurant is or will be for today’s 20 year olds, one that can harness the demand for casual food but package it in a way that makes it feel luxurious – the magic trick of the restaurant.
I have eaten out less this year than in 2022 but I have undoubtedly eaten better. The outer boroughs of London have continued to thrive in ways that have surprised even me. The intimacy between north west London and suburbs of Indian cities is now so close that TikTok food in Delhi might arrive in Harrow by lunch the next day, while the halal scene has become one of the most creative culinary blocs in the city, with restaurants increasingly looking to a pan-Muslim audience rather than a specific diaspora. Chinese students are creating Chinatowns of the future in Spitalfields and Kings Cross, but also new arrivals from Hong Kong could be on the cusp of turning Sutton and Kingston into new New Maldens (more on this next year). Two of my best meals of the year have been West African, with Sikatio and D&K Gambian Chicken and Rice doing as much to shift people’s perspectives as Chishuru and Akara are doing in the centre, while even Green Lanes, a road that has been admirably resistant to neophilia, has started to accept change. And the most hyped and sought after table of the year, for the first time ever, is in Leytonstone.
Perhaps the best thing about 2023 is that it has made me look forward to seeing how 2024 will build on it. Until then, here are my best and worst things about this year.
Pub lunch of the year
I usually consider pub roasts to be one of London’s more prosaic scams – spending £25 to have your roast cooked in a way you didn’t want it to be cooked, with a twist it doesn’t need. The Waterman’s Arms in Barnes has changed my mind. A recent Sunday lunch there featured a £80 Hereford beef rump big enough for three, but cooked in a way you just couldn’t at home, with the smoke of the grill amplified by a smoked garlic butter. Sides were cooked with the precision of a chef – in this case, Sam Andrews late of The Camberwell Arms – but not cheffified. Bookend it with a martini and the malt custard dessert, and you have something close to perfection.
Best meals of the year 10-6
10. Lamb mechoui and couscous at Chez Abda, Paris
9. Lunch tasting menu at Osip, Bruton
8. Chicken rotisserie at D&K Gambian Chicken and Rice, Forest Gate (eaten at home)
7. Pastrami sandwich at Langer’s, Los Angeles
6. Grilled fish at Argoe (and ice cream at Jelbert’s), Newlyn
Restaurant review that would have been better as an Alan Partridge TV pitch
Eating injera in Middlesbrough with Rod Liddle
Further sections in this newsletter
Pub lunch of the year
Best meals of the year 10-6
Restaurant review that would have been better as an Alan Partridge TV pitch
Instagram influencers of the year
Saddest closure of the year
Supernova: the verdict
The Thomas Straker Award for Diversity Within Restaurants
Cuisine of the year
Worst cuisine of the year
Surprise of the year
Most dependable takeaway spot near to a place I’ve lived
Favourite Topjaw video
Restaurant Critics: A Year in Stats
Best correction of the year
Restaurant of the year
Most inexplicably overrated restaurant of the year
Worst meal of the year
Quote of the year
Best meals of the year 5-1
Best meals of the year 10-6
Restaurant review that would have been better as an Alan Partridge TV pitch