Research shows that 53 per cent of working Londoners go to the same one or two places every day – simply because they lack inspiration. This week Time Out comes to the rescue with more than 75 top lunching spots right across town. Whether you‘re in the mood for something healthy or spicy, or need to console yourself after a morning of meetings with good old British comfort food, you can ’try something new today‘. We also celebrate the legends of your lunch hour: the providores of London‘s best workday takeaways.
Traditional comforts
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| Friday fuel at Rock & Sole Plaice |
Rock & Sole Plaice
Catholic traditions aside, fish and chips on a Friday is an ideal pre-weekend lunch for pretty much anyone: a feet-up reward for completing another week at work, and a prudent lining of the stomach in preparation for the evening’s drinks session. At this popular Turkish-run spot, the thick hand-cut chips are divinely crisp, and the firm juicy fish – haddock, cod, plaice – perfectly battered and fried. Specials may include mackerel, tuna or trout. Prices are much cheaper for takeaway – choose a seat inside or at one of the pavement tables and you’ll pay around twice as much.
Rock & Sole Plaice, 47 Endell St, WC2H 9AJ (020 7836 3785) Covent Garden tube.
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| S&M gets comfy at the eponymous café |
S&M Café
In the ’70s, when businessmen and politicians wanted a bit of S&M at lunchtime they’d head down to Streatham. Today, S&M customers are enjoying a different kind of satisfaction – sausage and mash – and can get it all day. It doesn’t seem right to call Kevin Finch’s business a chain, though there are three outlets with two more in the offing. It’s more accurately described as a collection of cafés, as the vintage interior of each property has been meticulously restored to preserve its character. Takeaway from the extensive range (up to 14 gourmet sausages including vegetarian options, plus hot dishes such as lamb and cider hotpot with honey-roasted mash) is available along with comfort puds (fruit crumble, spotted dick), and Fentimans traditionally brewed soft drinks.
S&M Café, 48 Brushfield St, E1 6AG (020 7247 2252/www.sandmcafe.co.uk) Liverpool St tube/rail.
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Square Pie
A Square Pie fits the hole in a round belly perfectly. From laidback market stall origins at Spitalfields, the company has expanded to office-friendly destinations including Selfridges and Canary Wharf. You’ll find a cavalcade of beefy options plus varieties such as chicken, leek and ham, lamb and rosemary and ‘Friday fish pie’. Those who don’t eat meat at all will be satisfied with mushroom and asparagus pie, which can be served with a vegetarian onion gravy as well as the tasty skin-on Maris Piper mash. To drink, there’s scrummy Chegworth Valley apple juices.
Square Pie, Jubilee Mall, 1 Canada Square, E14 5AX (020 7519 6071/www.squarepie.co.uk) Canary Wharf DLR.
Squat & Gobble
A cheery greeting, a large menu, a cosy yet rather hip interior – just the sort of place you’d want to squat and gobble in fact – and the lunchtime queues are testament to the food’s reliability and value. Dishes are comfortingly traditional as well as cosmopolitan – the menu divides into jacket potatoes (eight options, from baked beans through to steak salsa), ‘big fat sarnies and toasties’, soup (maybe carrot and coriander offered with bread or as a combo meal with jacket or sandwich) and a range of restauranty main-course and side-order salads. Hot dishes of the day – also available to take away in generous plastic containers – may include juicy satay chicken (or a spiced butternut squash alternative for the vegetarians) served with vegetable-flecked rice or bulgar (great value at £4.95). There’s even a hot pud to go – on our last visit a homely apple crumble served with your choice of cream, custard or ice cream. If mum’s not available to cook a nice hot lunch for you, this is a damn good alternative.
Squat & Gobble, 27 Tottenham St, W1T 4RJ (020 7580 5338/www.squatandgobble.co.uk) Goodge St tube.
West Cornwall Pasty Company
Don’t get anyone in the office who’s from the West Country chatting about what constitutes a proper pasty, or you’ll have to work overtime to compensate. The founding folk of this clever chain offer a traditional version incorporating diced potato, turnip, onion and steak (swede would be an acceptable inclusion in a Cornish variety, but your Devon pasty, see, eschews all root vegetables…). However, they aren’t so young-fogey that they don’t offer options such as pork and apple, chicken balti, cheese and bacon or turkey and cranberry. West Cornwall Pasty Company now has 18 branches in Greater London including Richmond, Chelsea, the Strand, Clapham and Strutton Ground, plus several god-sent kiosks in mainline railway stations (and let’s face it, you’ll be waiting around long enough to want one).
West Cornwall Pasty Company, 35 Strutton Ground, SW1P 2HY (020 7233 3777/www.westcornwallpasty.co.uk) St James’s Park tube.
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