Before a recent trip back I had not been to London since I was a child and of that, I can remember only a little. I had only been about 6 and most of the time I was too tired or too ill or too bored to pay attention to my father, dragging us from site to famous site around the city. I have vague memories of getting lost as he tried to find a famous curry house in Brick Lane, and him being cautioned for feeding the pelicans in St James’s Park.
The only thing I do remember favourably were the robotic dinosaurs chewing on the bloody corpse of a bigger dinosaur in the Natural History Museum. I thought then that this was the coolest thing I had ever seen and, most likely, ever would see. Indeed, on my first day back in London I headed straight over to the dinosaurs and was aghast to see only what looked like bigger versions of my toy Rex from Toy Story, jerking and creaking like he would when you wound him up.
Apart from this disappointment, my second trip to London was to be a great success, largely – and to my great surprise – due to the fantastic food I tried there.
The weekend was looking better than the childhood trip from the outset. Rather than waiting for the panting Gatwick Express, I travelled into central London by chauffeured limousine. When I had arrived my friends asked me what I wanted to eat.
‘Asian might be nice,’ I said.
I was next interrogated as to whether I would prefer Vietnamese from the Kingsland Road, Middle Eastern from the Edgware Road or Moroccan at Fulham Broadway. I was nonplussed, and so, in the end, we went for mezze at a little Lebanese in Olympia. And it was very good too.
London is often described as a collection of villages and that weekend I could certainly see the truth in this. The next morning I accompanied a friend to one of the many farmer’s markets that have come into vogue in London over the last few years. We went to the one in Notting Hill which was a lot smaller than I had expected and was already bustling with eager punters when we arrived; these were mainly middle-aged women with their own wicker baskets and sharp elbows. You could buy edible flowers and tomatoes in all colours on the vegetable stall and opposite that there was buffalo cheese, milk and meet on the show.
After stacking up we crossed the road and went to British television chef Jamie Oliver’s new ‘café’ which was about 8 times the size of any café I had been in before. Upstairs we trooped and after sampling the toast and black cherry jam ordered a breakfast of toasted tortilla, with tomato and basil sauce, Manolita smoked chillies, cherry tomatoes and free-range eggs.
This filled us up for most of the day but by supper (and after the dinosaur disappointment) our stomachs were rumbling again so we got the bus into Hammersmith and went to a pub called The Crabtree nestled amongst a little copse on the Thames. Too cold to eat outside we sat by the window and looked out at the swans from there.
Later, with a mouthful full of perfectly grilled sea bass, my friend suggested that the next day we could go to see the pelicans in St James’s Park.
Savouring a delectable piece of toasted goat’s cheese, I declined. ‘There’s a curry house I want to find in Brick Lane.’
Ant is based in Geneva but travels (and eats) extensively for work. Besides the farmers markets of London, Ant would recommend the fried tarantula in Cambodia and the Mexican sushi Ceviche.
Umesh Kumar
be Frenzy 
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