London is reputed to have the highest concentration of top notch restaurants in the world aside from New York. It also happens that the whole world lives in London or at least gravitates here at some point or the other. In any case the restaurant and eating scene has exploded a million fold over the last decade and a half, with all sorts of culinary houses springing up in the most unlikely of places including pop-up loos and in people's one-bed city flats. It helps that Gemini London, with it's mercurial penchant for constant re-invention, provides a fertile ground for a vibrant and somewhat quirky restaurant culture - a here today gone tomorrow foodie paradise of sorts. Thing is if you're not there today, it could be gone tomorrow.
There are 12 broad categories of London restaurants
Posh
Upmarket
Celebrity chef
Quality independents
Normal - ersatz
Ethnic-hip
Generic-ethnic
Gutter-hip
Gutter-trash
Roadside
Cafes
Dirt-bag outlets
Posh - Regardless of quality - I would lump all the key restaurants of Mayfair, Kensington, Knightsbridge, St James Park, Chelsea and Holland Park - in this category. We are talking about Le Gavroche, The Ivy, The Dorchester, the Wolsley, The Mandarin Oriental etc and other banal posh joints good or bad.
Frequenters - The super-wealthy and rich - notably Russian and Ukrainian Oligarchs and their mistresses, American Bankers, European and Arabian royalty, film stars, formula one drivers, premier league footballers and their partners, wealthy business moguls, senior members of the diplomatic corps, wealthy and established popstars rather than wannabe pop-ettes whose idea of eating posh is the Hackney Murder Mile, Brixton Village or under the Peckham Rye railway arches.
Upmarket - well watered and and good quality middle of the road British nosh, experimental cuisine a-la Heston Blumenthal or specialising in notable retakes of foreign cuisines.These restaurants can be found in historically or genuinely upmarket areas, notably Richmond, Hampstead, Barnes, St Johnswood, Marylebone, Islington/Barnsbury, Little Venice, Highgate, Wimbledon Village, Clapham, Wandsworth and Notting Hill
Frequenters - mainly wealthy Brits and Continentals (mostly bankers, glitteratis and politicals) who either can't afford the posh places or won't be caught dead in them
Celebrity - this includes good or bad restaurants owned by celebrity chefs - the Jamie Olivers, Tom Aikens and Gordon Ramseys of this world. They can be found anywhere but you will find them mostly in the Royal Borough, Chiswick and Fulham and in pretend-upmarket neighbourhoods in Wandsworth (namely Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth to be precise). A few can be found in the hip-trash enclaves of Hackney notably Dalston and Shoreditch.
Frequenters - the status-anxiety ridden South and West London yummy mummies of Wandsworth, Balham, Battersea, Fulham and Chiswick - these women and their spouses and sprogs often take to these celebrity joints in a desperate bid to flaunt their middle class credentials in the face of the local chavs whom they live amongst.
Quality independents - these are good sometimes reputable independent one-off restaurants, usually with a steady stream of professional or artistic clientele - found mainly in traditionally affluent or established gentrified areas - notably Richmond, Barnes, Putney, Clapham, Kew, Dulwich, Islington, Camden, Soho, Marylebone, Chiswick, Notting Hill, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, Highgate, Finchley, Stoke Newington, Blackheath, Greenwich and Crouch End
Frequenters - affluent professionals and local 'gentry'
Normal-ersatz - these are the usual bog-standard chains some good some bad, they are usually too chainy to be considered upmarket anywhere in central London otherwise they would qualify as upmarket if you happened to live between zones 3 and 6 or in the outer London deserts of Croydon and Bromley . Here we are talking about the Zizzis, Stradas, Prezzos, Cafe Rouges and Wagamamas of this world.
Frequenters - beer bellied men and their frumpy suburban wives and kids and ex-urban penguins and seals stuck in relatively affluent but mundane breeding grounds such as Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston, Bromley, Beckenham, Cockfosters, Purley, Wanstead, Southgate or Ealing. What else can you do in these areas except roost!
Ethnic-hip are broad and of varying quality - but they are mostly found in central and East Central London clustering around Soho, Fitzrovia and Covent Garden, Brick Lane, Bethnal Green and specialising in non-standard/rare ethnic fare, e.g. Scandinavian, French, Peruvian, Afghan, Indo-Iranian, Central Asian and Japanese cuisines.
Frequenters - experimental central Londoners notably media, professional and artistic types
General Ethnics - all Italian, Spanish, Lebanese, Greek, Turkish, African, Caribbean, Moroccan restaurants - many of which are similar to the normal ersatz category but are independents
Frequenters - anyone and everyone in a local neighbourhood
Gutter hip - restaurants serving micro-brewed beers in cardboard cups and tin cans in expensive trash-ridden East London hipster enclaves. There are very many and quite a number are pop-ups in Hackney and Peckham. They predominate in up heeled Hoxton, Shoreditch and Dalston, and in down heeled Hackney, Bethnal Green, and somewhat in yet to be fully categorised Brixton Village market and parts of Peckham and Newcross.
Frequenters - East London hipsters (twenty something year olds), student and young professional former Clapham-types who have chosen instead to live in Brixton and Peckham, artsy New Cross Crowd. Lately, Essex day trippers have been swarming to the Shoreditch-Hoxton-Dalston triangle for a legs up and when that happens, it is surely a bad sign.
Gutter-trash - all pretentious street food stands serving micro-burgers and pop-up restaurants found mainly in hipster enclaves of Hackney and Tower Hamlets but creeping steadily into wannabe hipster enclaves such as Brixton Village and Peckham
Frequenters - hungry students, Shoreditch and Spitalsfields' tourists, poor hipsters pretending to be hip
Roadside - any Indian, Chinese, Mexican or Thai restaurant everywhere.
Frequenters - anyone.
Cafes - greasy spoons up and down market and simple food joints everywhere
Frequenters - anyone
Dirt-bag outlets- the Macdonalds, KFC, Burger King, chicken and chips outlets, China town restaurants especially Wong Ke, eat as much as you like buffet dirt spots and Nandos .
Frequenters - people in transit between stations, suburban Londoners visiting central london, out of towners, bargain hunting tourists, council estate and chavy types.
Posted with Blogsy
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