London

Mangal II
George: ‘We go to ‘little Istanbul’ in north London in the evenings for dinner. We always ring ahead and reserve, even when it’s not necessary. We were there for Christmas dinner; we were the only people in the restaurant. The waiter said, ‘We’ve closed the restaurant for you gentlemen. It’s a private party.’ It’s just that nobody else came. One of our favourites at the moment is Mangal II. We have become friends with Mr Ali and the waiters. We are so close to the manager we were invited to his son’s double circumcision party.’

Gilbert: ‘It’s very important that we become friends with the owner. We don’t have credit cards so if we want to be able to pay by cheque, we have to become friends.’

George: ‘Our second favourite hobby is flirting with waiters.’

Phallic vegetables at Busan
Gilbert: ‘For dinner we used to go to a Korean called Busan [currently closed, but reopening on the Holloway Road]. We went there for six years non-stop.’
Feature continues

George: ‘The owner knew we were artists so every night he’d do more and more elaborate vegetable carvings for us on which to display the sashimi. Some particularly phallic ones. It’s very healthy food; one of our favourite dishes was yuk hwe – raw beef, pears cut up, egg and sugar. It’s 1,000 years older than steak tartare. We always thought it was an Oriental version of steak tartare, but in fact it’s much older.’

Gilbert: ‘We tried to find a new one.’

George: ‘We found one in Poland Street, Dong San, but it’s too far.’

Frank’s Café
Gilbert: ‘This is at an Italian on Commercial Road where they boil their own hams on Sundays. It’s a very friendly atmosphere. I always have the fried tomatoes, but George just likes them raw.’

Neal Street Restaurant
Gilbert: ‘This is us at the Neal Street Restaurant with art critic David Sylvester. He’s dead now but he was always completely outrageous.

George: ‘If we are entertaining, we take people out in the evenings. The places we normally go to, we wouldn’t take guests. They might go back.’

Gilbert: ‘In the old days we used to go to Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. Now we go to St John or Assaggi, though it’s hard to get in and it’s two hours’ walk to Notting Hill.’

George: ‘We also have London’s most amusing restaurant on our doorstep – Les Trois Garçons. Upstairs they have this parrot who shouts, “Where’s my money?”. We trained him to say, “Fuck the waiter”.

Tea for two
This picture was taken at The Market Café. As with their appearance, everything about Gilbert and George is as identical as possible, but each has their own twist. Gilbert, for example, takes sugar.