24hrs of eating in soho

For those wanting to experience a true slice of London life without the rose-tinted spectacles of well-kept tourist attractions and stately buildings obscuring the view, there are few better places to while away all hours of the day than at its pulsating core; the area mainly bound by the arterial routes of Shaftesbury Avenue, Oxford Street and Regent Street, also known as Soho.

Never was there a truer representation of the full spectrum of the walks of life that call this city home than within this approximate square mile of London. With a history steeped in entertainment and stimulation of every nature, you would be hard pressed not to find something that floats your boat with an unrivalled buoyancy.

The coarse queens of Old Compton, the vinyl votaries of Berwick, jazz junkies on Gerrard, Italian expats and strong espressos on Frith, working girls gyrating on Green Court, media creatives with sockless feet in loafers, Big Issue sellers and suited city traders swigging pints, pushers and gawkers, pimps and poets, preachers and prostitutes, titillation and tourists, clip joints and clerics, cops and robbers, Hare Krishnas and celebrities, musicians and poppers, even a Church of England primary school - you name it, Soho has it.

When it comes to entertainment in this neighbourhood, Soho caters for every penchant and predilection under the sun: theatre, cinema, striptease, brothels, kitsch cabaret, massages, drinking, book stores, narcotics, people-watching, dancing, debate, religion, stand-up comedy, live music, and galleries to name a few. Generous in its provisions to satiate so many base human desires, Soho does the more socially acceptable one exceptionally well too - food and eating it.

One could easily argue, is there ever really a need to leave? A question often posed in my four years living and studying in the surrounding areas. A pocket of London I adore and one that can understandably be quite the distraction. Here’s my personal guide of how to sustain yourself for 24hrs in this decadent district. 

Breakfast

Pick up a print that takes your fancy from Wardour News (118 - 120 Wardour Street) - one of the most impressive ranges of publications for sale in a newsagents you will ever see. From international newspapers to specific high-end editorials covering food, fashion, the gay and lesbian scene, travel and a whole lot more - if it’s in circulation, you'll find it here.

Armed with your niche glossy, head over to Nordic Bakery to start your day in the exceptional way the Scandinavians do so well.

Fika the early morning away with quality coffee, cinnamon buns, dark ryes topped with smoked salmon, herrings, and revel in the peace. Expect to share the space with some of the Soho creatives attracted by the clean lines of the interiors, and that have likely played a part in designing your reading material.

cinnamon buns at Nordic Bakery

Lunch

To keep it closer to home try out Damson & Co (21 Brewer Street). A much welcomed British deli and coffee house specialising in British cheeses, charcuterie and ceviche - possibly three of the best things to eat, ever. With cool and industrialised interiors, friendly and knowledgeable staff and exceptional sparkling red wine (who even knew there was such a thing), it’s a great option to kill an hour or two whilst consuming some quality fare.

Should the taste buds tingle for the Middle Eastern flavours of tahini and pomegranate molasses, head over to Yalla Yalla for Beirut street food. With a wide range of small plated mezzes (all served with pitta, olives and pickles) and larger mains to select from, you can either share with companions or indulge in a satisfying and solitary fill.

Another great option for a lively lunch enjoyed with friends is Barrafina where you’ll find some of the best tapas in the city. Stool perching allows visitors to embrace the true style of tapas with such traditional plates tempting diners as pan con tomate, prawn and piquillo pepper tortilla and tuna tartar. Expect a wait occupied by nibbles and drinks in the standing area while seating becomes available (they don’t take reservations) and keep your group to four or under.

octopus tapas at Barrafina

Dinner

If the evening calls for life affirming liquid goodness to help rest weary feet, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better place than either Tonkotsu or Bone Daddies, both purveyors of exceptional milky and deeply flavoursome Japanese ramen. In a similar vein, Koya will deliver on sublime udon noodles served cold with dipping sauces, or in hot broths and presented simply and with elegance.

Should the occasion befit a fine-dining splurge then Michelin starred Yauatcha is unlikely to disappoint. Serving high-end Chinese food from steamed buns and dim sum to hand-pulled noodle and rice dishes, along with delights such as jasmine tea smoked ribs and Mongolian style venison, this self-styled contemporary dim sum tea house will certainly tick all the boxes for a special occasion, but do prepare for a dented wallet.

For something a little more accessible, head over to Pizza Pilgrims where two brothers have moved from selling Napoli-inspired pizza from their three-wheeled Piaggio Ape complete with pizza oven (driven here from Italy), to bricks and mortar in the centre of Soho. Sourdough pizza bases blistered from the authentic clay gas-fired oven and rich San Marzano sauces complete the experience. Stick to the marinara or margherita classics for some of the most authentic pizza you’ll eat outside Napoli in this city.

the Pizza Pilgrims pizza oven

Late night

Pull up a pew outside the late night coffee-culture stalwart of Soho that is Bar Italia serving quality strong coffee to ardent followers from 7am to 5am every day since 1949. A haunt for Soho residents, coffee connoisseurs, creatives and ex-pat Italians alike, it’s a perfect place to banish the onset of fatigue and observe the ebb and flow of life on these streets in the small hours of the morning.

Before the dawn

For the insomniacs, vampires and those who simply refuse to call it a night, Soho’s 24hr dining venues lend a shoulder to momentarily rest tender heads while the party continues on around. When the body is beat but the brain thinks it’s breakfast time, Balans is a sure bet for decent eggs served by flirtatious waiters keen to continue the evening’s frivolities during their shift.

If the hankering is for a second dinner to soak up the sauce then the Chinese fare served at Old Town 97 (previously '1997' when I used to frequent it many a hazy evening - 19 Wardour Street ) will hit the spot like an arrow on a bullseye. Gather your comrades (including the new ones acquired during the course of the evening) and chow down on some perfect crispy Peking duck and pancakes. For mains and to re-awaken the senses, select your preference of carbohydrate and request a chilli oil so hot you could only ever entertain it inebriated.

A night in

With eyes squinting at the dawn of a new day breaking over Soho Square and energy reserves fast depleting, the realisation that the rest of the day will mostly be spent recovering on the sofa hits fast.

With foresight still functioning, make a beeline to Lina Stores once they open to gawp at a huge array of floor to ceiling Italian delicacies, charcuteries, cheese and brimming bowls of antipasti. Purchase a portion of their delicious and fresh ravioli made on the premises daily by pasta chef Gianni, and select from such tempting flavour combinations as beetroot with goats cheese, spinach with ricotta, or veal. Chuck them in boiling water, drizzle with olive oil and you can retreat back to the dark of the living room.

Squeeze in a sit-down at one of their outside tables, drink an espresso and digest the splendour that was the previous 24 hours before heading home.

pasta chef Gianni with all his handiwork at Lina Stores

Soho is one big delicious sullied multi-faceted melting-pot of an oxymoron at the heart of our capital city. Give it your unbroken attention for a full day and you will be rewarded with stories worth telling. 

For as the English author Samuel Johnson once quipped, ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford’.

pizza pilgrims, soho - review

Part of the charm of street food in London is that the nomadic vans, shacks and kerbside fixtures dishing out all manner of specialist eats have an air of uprising about them.

There’s a ‘we have incredible products to share with the city and will bloody well do so without the need for a fancy pants restaurant with a front door, proper kitchen and seats to sit on. Our sails of success are powered by the winds of hard graft, self-belief and social media. We are clear of the obstacles bricks and mortar present - sky high rents, oppressive overheads and walls - we are free to lay our hat where we please. Punters will entertain scandalous queues under hemorrhaging heavens to get their hands on our offerings because they know just how good they are. And we will continue on in our endeavour to bring great food to the streets of London no matter what - vive la révolution!’ sort of vibe.

And with this gutsy defiance and commendable persistence comes a following. An avid following. One that grows by the power of word-of-mouth and Instagram and culminates in dribbling disciples willing to traverse previously unchartered zones to clutch these holy grails of snack-attacks, followed by the obligatory sticky-fingered tweet.

And yet it seems the true benchmark of success of a street food trader is the transition to stationary selling at a fixed address, in a real building complete with premise number and postcode, also known as a restaurant. And many have progressed down this route with great success. 

Think Patty & Bun (started as a pop-up, now fixed on James Street W1), Pitt Cue Co. (began as a food truck on Southbank, now found on Newburgh Street W1), and Yum Bun (an old regular in Hackney's Broadway Market, now on Featherstone Street EC1) to name a few. 

To this list add Pizza Pilgrims. Taking their launch on Dean Street, Soho in August of this year from a three-wheeled green Piaggio Ape complete with pizza oven driven here all the way from Italy and a presence in Berwick Market, to prime real estate in one of London’s most bustling food quarters. The boys’ (brothers Tom and James Elliot) done good.

Now I’ve eaten pizza in Naples and with no hyperbole intended, it was one of the best things I’ve ever consumed. The sort of meal that on first bite, the wide-eyed unspoken stare of ‘ye GODS - did you just experience the same thing I did?’’ towards your dining companion is all you can manage as your brain attempts to process the pleasure receptor overload. 

With a benchmark set so high, I’m not sure a Neapolitan pizza made outside the region will ever match what I ate in Naples, and in all honesty I don’t expect it to (air miles of ingredients travelled, absence of technique passed down through generations, the tenacity of resident Neapolitans safeguarding the authenticity of their prized pizza demonstrated through the execution etc. will all play their part). But Pizza Pilgrims certainly make a commendable effort.

They’re careful to advertise their wares as ‘Napoli inspired’ on the website which is a fair description considering the menu of toppings extends beyond the only two variations you would ever find in a true Neoplitan pizzeria - a marinara (tomato sauce, oregano, garlic, no cheese) or a margherita (tomato sauce, cheese, basil). 

I stuck to the margherita to establish grounds for the fairest comparison against what I ate in Italy and because I wanted to give the few ingredients present the chance to take centre stage and have a waltz over my tongue. 

Certainly the best component of the pizza was the base - edges soft, risen and blistered from the circa 450-480C heat treatment of the oven, middle elastic and slightly chewy. It was very good. 

The chosen cheese of the establishment is fior di latte*, mozzarella made with cow milk rather than buffalo milk, and therefore quite a bit cheaper. While the former is certainly acceptable for an authentic Neoplitan margherita according to the original Italian Ministry of Agriculture document defining "Pizza Napoletana" for the EU (yes, such a thing exists and rightly so), my personal preference is made-that-morning milky buffalo mozzarella, creating a slightly soupy sloppy puddle of cloudy goodness in the middle of the pizza base, ubiquitous in quality margheritas across Naples. The cubetti of fior di latte used here was rather uninteresting and added little to the plate.

*The folks at Pizza Pilgrims HQ have kindly pointed out to me (post post-publication) that there is in fact a menu item of Bufala - a margherita with buffalo mozzarella. How I missed this on the night is not entirely clear (although also not wholly unbelievable - caught up in the excited anticipation of a good meal I've missed lots of things on menus before). It is this I will certainly order on my return.

In addition, I’m a garlic fiend (think roasted cloves into double digits consumed in one sitting) and the tomato sauce used in the margherita had no presence of it. Which is in fact correct, authentically speaking (it’s the marinara’s that can contain garlic, less so the margheritas). But there was a garlic shaped hole in my pizza (figuratively) that needed filling. With garlic.

But I did enjoy it. And I finished it, even ahead of my two companions despite getting my pizza last out of our trio as I was initially brought one I did not order (the music is loud and I can see how marinara and margherita can sound similar, but the waitress should have confirmed before leaving the table). It was good enough to make a blog post, which means I would return. But on return I would order the marinara - exclude the cheese, add the garlic and enjoy the excellent base.

The other reason to pop my head round the door once more is for the frozen desserts supplied by Gelupo based in Piccadilly Circus and one of the best places to get a gelato in town. Vanilla ice cream with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and sea salt crystals - a novel flavour combination for me and one I thoroughly enjoyed. Not to mention the blood orange sorbet served in the orange skin which was rather tart and sweet and wonderful and delivered in a brown paper bag. Cute.

The venue is loud, happening and relatively hip. Full of tourists, the young after work crowd and some Italians if my ears served me correctly. With the main dining area below ground, walls are adorned with Italian poster paraphernalia, table cloths are green and checkered, and it is altogether relaxed with a warm but slightly industrialised feel.

A central spot to hang out and eat pretty good, very reasonably priced pizza. The location does not lend itself at all to the feel of the genuine, narrow, washing line adorned, speeding scooter festooned death-trap that is a true Napoli back-street. And neither does the venue, but I don’t think it’s trying to. What it does do is make a decent stab at creating an authentic Neoplitan pizza here in London town for the flocks of people who continue to come and eat it. The regular clientele won’t be going anywhere else for pizza any time soon.

Good for: catching up with friends, a quick cheap bite, a longer cheap bite

Liked lots: pizza base, oven, location, Gelupo ice cream and sorbet

Liked less: the choice of fior di latte over buffalo mozzarella (they do have buffalo mozzarella margheritas - I just missed it on the menu - see above comment), the music that was too loud for easy conversation, you can’t make reservations (could result in queues on busy evenings) 

My rating: 3/5

Afiyet olsun.

arancina, notting hill - review

It’s certainly no challenge finding somewhere in London that sells a pizza for under £8. What is a challenge however, is finding a pizza that comes at least somewhere close to the authenticity and unmistakable excellence of pizzas from Italy, and specifically Naples.

I’ve been lucky enough to visit Naples, round about this time last year. I ate my way through the Amalfi coast, sampling lip-puckering lemons as big as melons from Sorrento; sucking on sweet and garlicky clams in my spaghetti vongole by the sea in Positano; drinking an espresso above the clouds at the top of Mount Vesuvius. If it’s a part of the world you haven’t yet ventured to, I strongly recommend paying it a visit for some of the best Italian food you’ll ever get your chops around. The pierce de resistance though, the plate that somehow managed to exceed the other already exceptional dishes from that trip by miles, the food that rendered Matt and I to stare at each other wide eyed in silence at first bite, dazzled and slightly confused by just how good it tasted, was the pizza we had in the city of Naples itself. A shack of an establishment fronted by a perpetual queue at every minute of every trading hour, it had simply two items on the menu – marinara and margherita, of which we ordered the latter. A plate of just four components – thin dough, tomato sauce, mozzarella and a few leaves of basil. But four components so fresh, the sauce so flavoursome with garlic and oregano, the dough so thin and crisp from the treatment it received in the wood fire oven, it was perfection in simplicity at its best. And if you want to see what the most incredible pizza in the world looks like, here it is.

pizza in Naples - other worldly

Once you’ve tasted a pizza from Naples, you will spend the rest of your life desperately trying to seek out the same experience somewhere closer to home. That, or you’ll give in to the calls of the divinely intervened dough, up sticks and move there. I bet people have done it before. Arancina has two establishments in Notting Hill and whilst it doesn’t make Naeopolitan pizzas, it serves up Sicilian pizzas; if there’s going to be anywhere in the region of Italy that has the balls to dare rival the food from Naples, Sicily is probably it. And low and behold, the pizza and the atmosphere in Arancina certainly made a decent stab at providing the next best experience to being there.

On entering, my companion Aarti and I were presented with smiling female staff and a pizza counter housing some ready made slices for those who wish to take away, along with a range of salads. We ascended up the stairs to the main seating area – a small room overlooking the main street with a few rustic wooden tables and two ladies already seated at one of them. Once we made ourselves comfortable, we soon realised the two customers already present along with the waitresses were all speaking Italian. And then another two diners entered, also conversing in Italian. As I’ve said many times before, if you find natives in a restaurant, you know  there’s a good chance it’s going to be good.

If you want to order a pizza authentic to Italy, a margherita or a marinara is the only way to go. Peppers, onions, meats, sweet corn and heaven forbid pineapple (whoever came up with that as a pizza topping should be strung and quartered) are all additions to help satiate the American palette – you certainly won’t find an Italian eating pizza with fruit on. A marinara is a base topped with just a tomato sauce and oregano – no cheese. A margherita is a marinara but with the addition of mozzarella and basil. True to the Italians, Aarti and I ordered the margherita and decided to share it so we could sample some other delights on the menu whilst still keeping within the £8 per head budget. Should you wish to just order the margherita however, you would still have £1 change (£6.95).

For a pre-pizza whetting of the appetites we ordered a portion of arancine – deep fried saffron risotto balls encasing a filling of spinach and ricotta (£2.60). I was expecting a few to be delivered, but it was in fact a single large ball. We cut it in half and happily devoured – the ricotta provided a pleasant acidic tang, the filling well seasoned and the casing crisp and light. The pizza was rectangular (14” x 8”) and presented on a wooden board. The base was wonderfully thin, and the sauce was top draw with lots of garlic and oregano as it should be. There was a little too much cheese for our liking – another trait of an authentic margherita is a small amount of cheese – and it was in fact the bits of dough with no cheese present that were the tastiest, allowing the flavours from the sauce to fully shine. Perhaps a marinara would be the way to go next time. To accompany our pizza, we had a salad of roasted vegetables with chopped lettuce, sliced black olives and tomatoes. It was dressed with a tasty vinaigrette and seasoned with more dried oregano.

The search for the pizza I had in Naples somewhere in London still continues. Perhaps I’ll search forever – it may be it just can't be replicated outside of Italy and of course, the country itself in which it is eaten is a huge part of the experience. But in the meantime, Arancina certainly isn’t a bad place to begin such a search. Grab your Italian phrase-book, pay a visit and pretend you're there.

The bill

Between two:

arancine £2.60

margherita £6.95

roast vegetable salad £5.30

Total £14.85

Alfiyet olsun.